


Stone for Star

by SaturnineArbiter



Series: The Stars Are But A Current [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe- Space, Artificial Intelligence, Asexual Character, Attempted actual science, F/F, F/M, Genetic Modification, House of Suns- Fusion, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Genocide, Languages, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mental Illness, Playing fast and loose with characterization, Psychological Torture, Temporary, Violence, cloning, definitely not astrophysics, not physics, warning I am a biochem major
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-10-10 15:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10440825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaturnineArbiter/pseuds/SaturnineArbiter
Summary: House Crocker comes out of nowhere with a request for the grief- and guilt-stricken Sollux Captor, his brother Mituna Captor, and Damara and Aradia Megido. They are in no way prepared for what they find beyond the furthest reaches of civilization, with deadly consequences.





	1. Root

**Author's Note:**

> So here we are.  
> I thought I'd edit to add this, though it is late.  
> Two and a half years ago, I sat in a little courtyard outside of a restaurant in Peru the night before my cousin's wedding. Something compelled me that night and I began to write, fumblingly, the first words of this story in an exhausted and halting mash of English and Spanish.  
> A few months later, there were twenty-thousand words; a year later, forty-thousand. This story has surpassed both in length and scope all but one of any others that I have written.  
> My first thought, staring at the screen and the first part, was _Sollux? Really?_ I don't dislike him, I just didn't have any particular feelings for him, like, at all. But, as it turns out, _Sollux. Really._  
>  I don't know how great the characterization in this fic is, but it has all of the attention, care, and love that I could manage to fit into it.  
> Thank you to the lovely caffeinatedpaint, who tolerated my constant whining and insecurity and suffered through my disastrous attempt to turn this into an original fiction work. Thank you to my sister and cousin, who listened to me babble about the worldbuilding and asked questions or made fun of it. Thank you to my creative writing teacher, who dealt with context-less sections I gave him to proofread and sweetly assumed that it was original fiction and that I'd somehow come up with all of these names myself.  
> On with the show!

Sollux 

Sollux floated in the fluid of the ship-sac, hands conducting the brilliant lights of the ship system, examining planets, gravitational warps and trembles, the brightness of stars. He input the route and requested communications, feeling Twin Armageddon whisper into his skull.

Karkat, of course, replied to the hailing with typical ire. “Can’t you do anything on your own, Captor?”  

Sollux snorted and materialized an avatar in Karkat’s ship. All the better to annoy him with. “KK, if I needed you to hold my hand in ships, Twin Armageddon wouldn’t be mine.”

“No, you’d have TC.” Karkat’s avatar appeared in a thin shower of light, refracting oddly through the tinted lenses of Sollux’ goggles. “Or GC. I think there’s a mount in GC.”

“Or AC,” Sollux replied distractedly, eyeing the readings from his screen. “I’m near Marus system, anything you want me to pick up?”

“You know what.”

Sollux looked up at the avatar, quirking up one side of his mouth at Karkat’s flailing limbs and disgruntled expression. “What, the newest in romantic comedies?”

“Books and vids?” Karkat asked sweetly, fluttering his eyelashes. “If you can manage to disengage long enough to leave your ship?”

“If I can pull out of my mount.”

Karkat made a face. “Don’t remind me.”

“I’ll be at Alternia in a few ship-hours.” He heard Karkat sigh. “What?”

“Did you forget about the Reunion?”

“No.” His stomach squirmed unpleasantly. “I’m just completing some overdue errands.”

“Two galaxies over.” Karkat said flatly. “Convenient, that. TA will need an upgrade if you want to get to the Reunion on time.”

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed.” Sollux widened his eyes. “That flew right over my horns, really.”

“Fucker.” Karkat said calmly- or at least as calmly as Sollux had ever known him to be. He raised an eyebrow. “Aradia just sent a docking message. Put an extra note— on the public memo board, mind you—that she was looking forward to seeing you again.”

Sollux winced. “I-”

“Owe her at least a little time in the block, if you ask me.” Karkat paused faux-thoughtfully. “Or if you ask anyone. Even Vriska and Aranea, and you know how _they _are.”__

 “Sure.” Sollux rolled over and created an emergency, letting a bit of the engine fluid leak into space, setting off a dozen red alarms that he was sure Karkat would see.

“Sollux!” Karkat snapped in a warning tone. “Don’t you fucking dare-”

“Oops, gotta go, engine failure,” Sollux dropped casually, shutting off communications in a burst of artificial static. He didn’t need to keep audio open any longer. He could easily imagine Karkat’s scream of frustration.

Shit. Aradia.

Sollux did what he did best, of course, when confronted with an awkward, emotional problem; he busied himself with other responsibilities in order to procrastinate until he absolutely needed to face it.

The computer pinged at him, helpfully reminding him that the rendezvous was soon enough that he’d miss it entirely if he dallied for much longer. The planetary paths wouldn’t be quite available anymore, yadda yadda…

Sollux dismissed the message, saved the recordings and notes of what found and recorded so far, and turned the ship to Reunion.

 

He was a third or so of the way through Caliborn’s Cloak, a few ship-hours from Reunion, when one of his clone-batch brothers sent him a message.

Mituna, he realized, on the Catastrophic Testimonial. He took it reluctantly, feeling Mituna’s desire to see Sollux, a bit of petty epicaricacy in anticipation of seeing Aradia and Sollux interact for the first time in years, his excitement at seeing Latula and Kurloz.

Vriska Serket (god, he hated her) invited him to eat with her batch-sisters. He sent a message of definite refusal ( _Vriska_ ) and a token apology, because he didn’t _hate_ Aranea (though it was probably a matter of time).

Docking, he sighed, releasing bubbles into the embryonic fluid. He hated this part of any journey, but it was a constant of being one of his House.

Karkat and Terezi came into the ship uninvited just as Sollux was peeling his goggles away from his face. He winced at them, one of the lenses dangling and splattering blood on the ground. He heard Karkat exclaim and spit invective.

Terezi wavered from one foot to the other. “Any help there, Sollux?”

“Yeah, sure.” He muttered, trying not to beg for it. His eyes were watering with the pain, and he knew Terezi would do what he still didn’t have the courage to do— rip it off.

“Like a bandage,” Terezi said into his ear, suddenly close, uncannily responding to what he’d thought in the way she did, as though she could read his mind. Sollux had only a second to tense before the goggles were off and he was shrieking in pain, Terezi’s hand closing over the bleeding flesh of his cheekbone and brow ridge.

Karkat made horrible noises in the background while Terezi swabbed at his face, gathering up the blood best she could. “There you go— don’t be a big baby, you hardly bled at all this time.”

Sollux threw the soaked rag at her. “You’re a fucking liar.” He picked up the goggles from where they had fallen gingerly and tucked them in his pocket. “Where’s LT?”

“Gone to see Mituna.” She chuckled. “They’re being disgusting.”

A sudden exclamation of Karkat’s handheld communicator made them all jump. “We’re going.” Karkat said. “Sollux, if I never see another one of your gross bodily fluids again I’ll be more than happy.”

“You’re just jealous ‘cause your House came out funny,” Terezi teased. “Oh Karkles.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Karkat’s forehead creased in irritation.

“Shut it.” Sollux staggered to his feet and hugged Terezi gratefully. “Love you.”

“Love you too, darling.” She chuckled. “How was whatever you stayed so late on the fringes for?”

“Boring.” He admitted. “I got Karkat a handful of Calliopaean movies and TV shows.”

Karkat tried hard not to sidle over to him. Self-control was not, however, one of Karkat’s strong points. “How was the selection?”

“Decent. I hope you don’t already have any of them.” He popped a chip from his pocket and dropped it into Karkat’s hand. “Where’s the mess? I haven’t taken anything but ship-supplements for ages.”

“Down this way.” Terezi flipped her cane around and began dragging Sollux down the hallway, away from the safety of his ship and towards the inevitable confrontation with Aradia.

Aradia 

“Have you found the cave entrance yet?” asked Diyera, leaning over the railing, propping her feet on the twin curls of the Megido sigil. Aradia looked back at her with a shrug she hoped would be seen as a grimace.

“No. The whole thing’s a mess. Radaia’s trying to pick the westward flange of the ship up off the outcropping.” She pulled up a schematic for Diyera to look over. “The project isn’t going well— _Terranova_ is almost completely submerged in silt.”

“I wish her luck with that.” Diyera said. “Great Summoner, how deep is that silt?”

“The oceans deposit a lot of organic gunk, particularly recently. The red tides are cyclical at this point.”

“That’s horrible. I feel awful.”

“For the Crockers?” Aradia asked.

“Yeah.” Diyera vaulted the railing and drifted down to stand next to her, popping out a hip as she squinted down at the projected turbines underneath them. “Is there any sign that the water’s clearing?”

“No, none. Radaia can tell you more. Radaia, are you listening?” Aradia tapped her cheek to tell Diyera to turn on her earpiece, squinting at the murky visual data Radaia’s computer was sending back.

“ _I’m listening. What did you want, Diyera?_ ”

“Could you tell me a little about how the water’s cleaning? And how the species catalogue is doing? The biologists are getting restless. They want to start repopulating the deeper reaches.” Diyera drifted forwards a little, step by step, and gently touched the image projected on the screen, distracted. “I think it would do the planet good, too.”

“ _I wish we could start, but we just haven’t gotten that far. The water’s still filthy. I started out optimistic, but I’m starting to agree with Iredea and the others—I don’t think even we can fix this. I don’t think that anyone could fix the water here. I think it’s more likely that we do the best we can, modify some of the animals to survive, and put this planet out to seed in the hopes that it eventually recovers.”_

“That’s someone’s _home_ , though.” Diyera frowned. “I wish we could do more. Aradia?”

“There’s nothing more we can do, and you know it. Even if all of Megido’s resources were turned onto this, we could maybe accelerate the process by a few thousand years, and who knows if the Crockers will even be alive by then? Besides, neither of us are anywhere near. If you want, I can help you check it out after Reunion’s over.”

“That’d be great.” Diyera sighed. “Ah, Aradia—I meant to ask, when are you going to see that matesprit of yours?”

“Eventually,” Aradia said. “The coward.”

“Beat him over the head once you get him alone,” Diyera advised. “That’s the only way to deal with idiots like him.”

Aradia snorted. “Well, if only I could. He’d probably cry.”

“Good luck with that guy. Erodiade only knows why you started dating him in the first place.”

“Ah, screw you.” Aradia said affectionately. “Everything was just fine before I died.”

“I know it was, you poor sucker.” Diyera laughed at her. “Aradia, really, though. When are you going to break up with him?”

“Oh, _I’m_ not going to be doing the breaking up.” Aradia said.

“That kid just doesn’t know what’s coming, does he?” Diyera plopped down in the chair next to Aradia. “Merciless, aren’t you?”

“Well, _thanks_ ,” Aradia glanced down at her. “Just wait until you have a matesprit, Diyera. Then you’ll understand.”

“I doubt it,” Diyera answered airily. “Any matesprit I have better be capable of keeping up with me, because I won’t be doing them any favors.”

“Sollux needs some favors, though.” Aradia sighed. “The poor boy doesn’t know how to talk to people in general, let alone someone he hurt and who he has a crush on. The poor ridiculous boy.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Diyera shot back. “That kid needs a backbone.”

“He needs _help._ ” Aradia said. “He needs to get over me, find someone new, and maybe a kismesis—he needs someone who’ll kick him in the ass.”

“What little ass he has.” Diyera said mournfully. “Aradia, why do you go for the ones with tiny flat asses? I mean, excepting Vriska and Terezi, but honestly? That boy’s bony enough to stab someone with his elbows and draw blood. His entire House is. It’s a shame they kept that from Hymapter—they could at least have given them a little padding.”

“Rude! He may not have an ass, but he’s very sweet.”

“Yes, those little snaggleteeth are quite manly.”

“Oh, shut up.” Aradia kicked back. “How’s Damara?”

“She’s doing as well as ever.” Diyera frowned. “I don’t know—I think the council brought her in to discipline her. Which doesn’t make sense. She hasn’t done anything seriously wrong since that time in Chayar with the Galodi rep.”

“They just love picking on her,” Aradia said. She kicked off her chair and spun around, facing Diyera. “Now, cut to the chase and tell me what you came here for.”

“Oh, shit. Can’t get anything past you, can I?” Diyera grinned ruefully. “Oh, Aradia. Radile told me to have you report at 0700 to room 1520 in the south wing. Sollux, Mituna, and Damara are reporting too, so there’s your excuse for going to talk to him. He needs info from you.”

“Report? What for?” Aradia asked. “I’ve kept my nose clean since I died. I shouldn’t be in any trouble—I understand why Mituna and Damara and Sollux would be, but I’ve been a model of good behavior. The council shouldn’t have any beef with me.”

“Oh, it’s not a punishment hearing.” Diyera reassured. “It’s a mission briefing, I believe. Radile says that you four _specifically_ were requested. Get ready—your ship’s the _Forbidden Tantalus._ Good luck with that one.”

“Are you kidding?” Aradia pulled a face. “I hate the _Tantalus._ Kill me now. Any idea what the mission’s on?”

“Some kind of exploration thing—I mean, it’s a couple months long at the very least. No clue why.”

“Any idea who’s requested it?”

“No, sorry.” Diyera shrugged. “Go talk to your man, Aradia. You have a mystery to unravel.”

 

Sollux 

Pity was, Sollux couldn’t avoid Aradia for long. He could only come up with so many excuses, and most of them involved Equius, who was absolutely smitten with her beyond reason, and who only grunted when she came in, feet clanking on the floor.

“TA. It’s been a while. What, seventy years?” She said, brittle. Oh, shit.

“AA.” He squeaked. “Um, nice to see you again.”

She remained silent and he turned around, confronted with empty open blue eyes. “Sollux, would you have talked to me if I hadn’t forced Equius to tell me where you were?”

“Probably not.” He replied. She’d know if he didn’t tell the truth.

“Sollux.”

“AA—Aradia.”

She sat down on the swivel chair in front of him, kicking her legs up. Equius had done an incredible job on her, limbs and all; her mannerisms were just like when she’d been alive, so much so that it hurt Sollux to look at her.

“I don’t blame you.” Aradia said softly, staring at him with her pupil-less cobalt eyes. “I miss you, though.”

Tears blurred his eyes momentarily and he wiped at them. “I’m—what do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say sorry, for one.” Aradia said. “And then ‘maybe it’d be better if we took a break, or broke up entirely’.”

Sollux jerked in his chair. “Aradia-”

“It’s not going to work between us right now.” Aradia scolded. “You’re afraid to look at me, and I’m frustrated and my patience only extends so far. Sollux, you know it won’t work.”

“We can try,” Sollux said, not sure why he was clinging to a relationship with a girl he could barely stand to look in the eye.

“Sollux.” She snapped.

He groaned. He never had won an argument with her.

“Aradia, maybe it’d be better if we took a break, or broke up entirely.” Sollux parroted without inflection. Aradia stamped her metal foot on the ground.

“Mean it!”

“Aradia, it’s fucking hard to keep a relationship with you, it’s fucking hard to handle Vriska, and it’s fucking harder to break up with you!”

She glared at him, crossing her arms. “Well, you’ll have nearly fifty ship-days to do it.”

“What?”

She stood up, stretched, and began wandering away.

“Aradia, what?”

“Come on, then!” She called back, flicking her wrists at him.

He climbed to his feet, knees wobbly, and began loping after her, stumbling up stairs until she opened the door for him into a conference room, where six already sat, two of them extremely familiar. His seat had a name-plaque on it and a discreet file on the chair. Sollux saluted his much-elder and seldom-seen brother Pollux Captor as he took his seat next to Mituna.

"So what's going on?" Aradia asked, taking her own seat, seeming completely unruffled by their earlier altercation. Next to her, Damara kicked her legs up, ignoring her sisters. Radile Megido, one of their older House-sisters, keyed what appeared to be passwords into tablets and set them in front of Damara. Damara passed one to Aradia.

Pollux, for his part, used the same polished professionalism when giving Mituna and Sollux their tablets. Sollux saluted him again, as House protocol mandated, and then leaned back to listen.

"As Radile no doubt told you, mission aboard the Forbidden Tantalus," the tall man said. He was human, solidly built, with a faint scent of tobacco hovering around him. Sollux recognized him after a moment's pondering, and his mouth abruptly went dry; this was Father Crocker, a Houseparent of a prestigious but nearly extinct House. John Crocker’s father. Oh please, let this not mean that John was around.

Father Crocker gestured expansively at them. "You'll be taking her out of Caliborn and Calliope both."

Aradia nearly dropped her tablet. Sollux jumped.

"Deadspace." Damara said, an odd tone to her voice. The scars to her and Mituna’s brains and the psychological pain they suffered were product of Deadspace. Sollux had to wonder at the sensitivity behind picking them for this mission. That meant that either Father Crocker or both Houses Megido and Captor had decided on this, either of which would have been rather vicious choices regardless.

"Hell fucking no." Mituna hissed. "Fuck you."

Father Crocker raised his eyebrows. He didn't have eyes, an unnerving peculiarity his House normally rectified with a clever contraption of goggles, implants, and electrodes, but for reasons unknown he rarely—if ever—wore one. His blank stare was still unnerving.

"Why Deadspace?" Aradia asked, breaking the silence. Sollux blessed her with all of the limited benedictions Caliborn offered.

"Several weeks ago, routine sweep, two patrol ships were probing out into Deadspace." At Damara's cynical eyebrow, he sighed. "Standard procedure in Calliope. Remnant from when the space between was considered Deadspace and you were attacking us."

Damara kicked her legs up onto the table, as if to covey disdain for everything Father Crocker represented. Aradia slapped one of her legs down, but ignored the other.

"Regardless, we found something."

"Cut the cryptic bullshit." Sollux grumbled. "Just tell us what it is that has you greenshifters so spooked."

Father Crocker's eyebrows drew down. "We only know that it was something, Captor. The dimensions we understood of it were too vague and nebulous."

"How big?" Mituna asked sullenly.

Father Crocker tossed an image casually into the air between them all. It hung, a dark, colorless shape, bulbous all around, with perhaps a hint or two of something that could have been metal.

"Many—our instruments indicated over ten thousand—kilometers in diameter."

"So, a planetoid." Aradia said, glancing from Father Crocker to the projection.

"I wish." Father Crocker said with such heartfelt emotion that all of them looked at him for a startled moment. "No, it gives off life signs."

"Inhabited planetoid." Damara snorted.

"Perhaps I should have phrased it better." Father Crocker replied. "The entire thing is alive. As in, we could sense motion within it, on its peripheries, and if we pelted it with enough radar we could distinguish that there was flesh underneath a layer of stone and iron armor. Even detect nervous activity. Too much to attribute to wetware processing."

"What the fuck-" Sollux leaned forward and accessed the radar scans and readouts, frown growing deeper with each paper. "These are legitimate. What the fuck."

"My thoughts exactly." Father Crocker took off his hat and mussed his hair. "Your mission is to take the Forbidden Tantalus and investigate."

"Why House Captor?" Aradia asked. "Why not House Maryam? They're the ones gifted with biologicals."

"Better yet, leave us alone." Mituna snarled. "Go get your own shitty House and dive in."

Father Crocker's lips pressed together. "My House is close to extinction, and though Jake and Jade are likely to be furious, I can't afford to lose a single one of them. Houses Captor and Megido encompass some of the most powerful psychics on a level none of Calliope's Houses can reach."

"Better at attacking and at running away, if it comes to that." Aradia said frigidly.

"If it comes to that." Father Crocker agreed.

 

Karkat 

Karkat ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “Kankri, I love you, I swear to fuck I do, but I’m just got here, and I’m going to be hanging out with Sollux and Terezi for a while. Don’t tell me the homeworld just _decided_ to have an emergency meeting. That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“Bullshit or not, it is true.” Kankri raised his eyebrows. “Sollux and Terezi will have to wait. Karatous is the Acolyte of this meeting, and you will show him the respect you neglected last meeting. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t already been censured. Krevan must think the world of you, goodness knows why with how profane you are, even for Sufferance.”

“I have things to do! Promises I made!” Karkat snapped. “What is the meeting even about?”

“I’m not certain.” Kankri’s mouth twisted almost imperceptibly. “Whatever it is, however, Krevan has given Karatous full control over the situation. Vankre and Krevan will be on the side-lines.”

“So an unscheduled reunion, and that shitheaded windbag is chairing it. Great.” Karkat realized that he was leaning forwards with his anger and forced himself to relax back into his chair, its rigid lines digging into his back and doing nothing to improve his mood. Kankri, before him, sat in his ship, which was undoubtedly more comfortable—it was minimalist, almost Spartan, in its size, but still molded to his preferences. The avatar shifted, slightly more of his chair coming into view as Kankri leaned into it. Karkat imagined that his image must be painfully bright for Kankri—the avatar’s position betrayed how dim the lights in his ship were compared to Karkat’s Reunion rooming.

“I do wish you would not be so vulgar.” Kankri rested his chin on his hand. “It’s not as though I want to be telling you this. To be very, very honest I would have to say that I was not happy when Vankre informed me of the meeting.” A ping interrupted him, the light in the image brightening faintly as he opened a window on the screen.

“What, another missive from Vankre?” Karkat asked.

“Yes.” Kankri frowned. “Let’s see… Well. It appears that we would both be benefited to go to this gathering.”

“Oh, why-ever-fucking-should-we-not?” Karkat threw up his hands. “Look, just tell me.”

Kankri huffed. “I was reading through it so I understood what it meant to say! Vankre says that Karatous ordained this based on new information regarding Colamér and—no, that can’t be right.”

“Colamér?” Thrown for a loop, Karkat tried to think on what could have happened. “What happened, Kankri?”

“There has been a development regarding the fall of the Empress,” Kankri read out from the missive slowly. “House Crocker has found something.”

“Oh.” Karkat’s heart plummeted into his stomach. “Oh, shit. Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Kankri darted a glance back up at Karkat, face ashen. “What could have happened? She’s supposed to be dead. We were certain.”

“And House Crocker found something.” Jittery, Karkat tapped his nails on the arm of his chair, random patterns turning into a deep scratch as something occurred to him. “Oh, fuck, Kankri—Crocker—what if she—”

“She’s dead! There’s no chance in heaven or hell she survived.” Kankri scrubbed his hands in front of him like a frantic prayer aimed at no god in particular.

“How do you know? You weren’t there. You’re second-generation—you didn’t get any of Vesuvius’ memories.”

“I know!” Kankri snarled. “You don’t understand! Arbukala—no. If you have to ask someone, ask Karatous at the meeting. I never saw combat, but I remember what it was I saw in his head. She’s dead. Nitram made sure of it.”

Karkat nodded mutely, accepting that but not believing it—he couldn’t bring himself to, not when Crocker and the Empress were involved. “But Kankri…something has to have happened. And if something in Colamér at the same time—”

“No coincidences, only correlations undiscovered.” Kankri said dully. “Yes, I know.”

They sat in uneasy silence for a while, faint differences in light playing over Kankri’s face. Karkat kicked the desk in front of him.

“Are you on your way?” He asked.

Kankri visibly collected himself before answering. “Yes, I am. I will be there in ten days’ Ijada-subjective-time.”

“I’m heading over.” Karkat decided. “I’ll be there in—in a month. I’ll see you then.”

Kankri frowned, on familiar ground at last. “Karkat, you know that saying ‘a month’ is—”

He shut off the transmission and monitor, pulled up a transcript of their conversation, and stared at the last thirty seconds. Colamér. Holy Mother, they were boned.

Sollux pinged in, asking a moment of his time. Karkat stared at the message for a moment, debating. Should he answer Sollux, tell him he couldn’t stay, and then leave? Should he not answer Sollux and leave? Should he answer Sollux and say nothing and _then_ leave?

He declined the call. Fuck it, he had to get on his way.

Father Crocker 

House Crocker, at current, included two children with extraterrestrial DNA. This was not the norm for Houses of either Calliope or Caliborn, but Father Crocker was unconventional by any metric.

His mother and aunt had both been biologists, his aunt for genetics in particular. They had instilled in him a fascination and a love of genetics, organismal biology, and taught him cloning. He was well-beloved by prehuman Houses, loaning out and giving his services in aiding in their creation. To many, he was honorary godfather.

Father Crocker rubbed his chin as he walked, adjusting his tie. His cream-colored suit was festooned with machinery, invisible to the casual observer. It was easy to not bother to detect the thin, barely-there metallic gleam. He wondered if any of the Caliborn Housechildren had actually thought him blind. To his amusement, the shifting cloak of optic machinery provided him with better visual acuity than most individuals.

Underestimation.

The central tenet of such games as politics, the grey pawn both sides seek to capture; underestimation.

It could be argued that eyes were necessary for the lives of spacefaring children. It could be argued that the integumentary nodes he and his natural-born forebears grew were unnecessary and uncomfortable, that his lung-system was archaic, his and his family’s reproductive faculties and tendencies remnants of a culture that should be obsolete for a great House.

Father Crocker, who had continued to live on Colamér until the planet’s destruction, scoffed. Colamér’s culture and practices had been alive and well both before and after House Crocker’s creation. He himself had had three biological children (as far as he knew, of course, it wasn’t as if the women with whom he consorted were monogamous), though they were long dead.

Clinging to traditions was thought by most to be a sign of weakness and barbarism, of failure to adapt. Some Houses, overtaken by inertia, became reclusive and isolationist after perhaps a brief intergalactic spate. Other Houses—among them the Gaebril, the Okono—adapted smoothly, elegantly, and became of a swift spacefaring culture. They couldn’t remember what they had been like on their planet before, unlike Crocker and Lalonde, who kept those cultures and their home planets. To a certain extent.

So Father Crocker did as he would in every respect, and his Housechildren were products of that. His dedication to the dogma of the preservation of diversity in any form had created them.

Both theoretically and in practice, most members of Houses acted rather similar, as tradition mandated. If not for the genetic grafts, it was almost definite that Jake, Jade, and Jane would have similar personalities, if not the same. Jade's abilities had made her slightly more- herself, Father Crocker felt, and playing off of her more unique three sibling-clones, Jane had developed a distinct personality and attitude.

But Jake… Jake was different to a terrifying degree. Initially, he had been only slightly different, a genius like his siblings. His development had deviated from there, sometimes in expected trajectories: he preferred solitude, which Father Crocker had expected from the first graft, conducted in the usual manner. The second graft had been a gamble—a gamble that Father Crocker feared he had lost. His hope had been that Jake’s independence and strong sense of self would defend him from the graft, which had killed two of his siblings; they had been born brain-dead, for seemingly no reason.

Jake had survived what his siblings did not. That had been considered victory enough at the time. But Jake had only spiraled downwards from there, showing a rapid decline in rationality and his own self-confidence. Where previously he had been independent, starting at his tenth year after the graft he became bizarrely subservient and emotionally unstable to a point which could not be explained away with mania. His sense of self began to deteriorate, and with it his relationships with others.

Though it was far from solipsistic, his behavior had broken many ties with Lalonde, alienated his siblings, and began to kill him slowly. Fifty years ago was the first time they had been forced to sedate him for his own safety and their own health. Since then, his lucid periods had been few and far between, uncontrollably interrupted and taken over by long periods of violent, delirious panic alternating between mania and depression.

He had to wonder if this were a form of divine retribution from Calliope for their sins. A way of forcing them to pay for their crimes through a fitting punishment by proxy.

Father Crocker turned the corner and smiled at Jade and John in the few seconds before they barreled into him.

“And how has Hellmurder kept itself?” he asked.

“Jane’s off with Roxy. They went for a ‘spin’ a week ago.” John grinned.

“And you two?” He moved his hands to rub over their heads, chuckling when Jade whined and batted him away.

“We’ve been running simulations and training for a few days.” She provided. “We made it past level ten this time!”

“Impressive. Jake?” Father Crocker asked. He would call it tempting fate if he were superstitious. He was not.

“He’s in his room.” Jade replied, drawing up the map locating everyone within the base. “Or… crap! He left. He hadn’t slept in a week! He should stay put!”

Without a word, John turned and sprinted off. Jade chewed her lip. “I think he’s on the observation deck. He likes it up there.” She said doubtfully.

Father Crocker hoped that John had taken something with which to sedate Jake. The last time someone had forgotten, Jane had broken five ribs.

John buzzed them with a message. They were wavering on the observatory steps, across the room from Jake, hesitant to enter. Father Crocker took the stairs two at a time, cueing Jade to the infirmary. Within twenty minutes, at least one person would need to go there.

Jake sat in the corner of the observatory, seated on the floor with his arms wrapped around his knees. Goggles off and chin balanced on his left knee, he would have looked like he was staring at something distant if it weren't for his lack of eyes.

"Jake." Father Crocker said gently. Jake didn’t move, but the cords in his neck twitched like he’d tried.

"Dad." He mumbled glassily. John hovered over Father Crocker's shoulder, hands fidgeting. Eventually, they approached. Jake didn’t look prone to violence at the moment. If anything, he looked near-catatonic. Unfortunately, that particular condition grew more and more commonplace by the day. If there had been any consolation to Jake’s violence, it was that it was indicative of physical fitness.

Carefully, Father Crocker stepped back, allowing John to dart forward and give Jake his goggles. Jake blinked open his 'eyes' slowly and murmured thanks.

Both of them helped Jake to the infirmary. Jade took one look at them and pressed her lips in a thin line, pulling back the bedsheets so that they could drag Jake the final few steps to the bed.

"I can’t believe this.” She snapped. “When do you think he got out? The moment we went into simulations the last time? Does anyone want to bet?”

Jake flinched on the bed and she huffed and returned to getting an IV and a scan.

John received the results. "It doesn't think he's had anything to drink in ten days. Or anything to eat."

"Or much light." Father Crocker extrapolated with a grimace. He bent down and planted a kiss on Jake's forehead. If he had known how it would turn out, he would never have grafted that sample to Jake.

Jade clucked her tongue. "I'll give him fluids. Any injuries?"

John was already examining Jake, patting at his limbs and torso. "No, I don't think so."

Half-delirious, Jake fell limply back into the bed when released. Troubled, Father Crocker chose not to mention the Deadspace anomaly. He had enough trouble with the other Houses, and if Jake gleaned word of it, he and Jade and John and Jane would be gone the next day with Jake providing the muscle he didn't yet have the energy to use.

"It's the eye," Jake murmured. "My eye."

Disturbingly, his delusions had come to center on eyes. He believed that his were elsewhere, ‘trapped’ somewhere and blinded.

Not even their genetic memory contained codes for eyes.

None of the scanners had been able to find anything wrong with his neurobiology and mental health that could explain his problems. They'd tentatively offered several diagnoses and nothing to help, noting his mood disorder and half-heartedly suggesting medications. The only concrete thing they'd been able to say was that Jake couldn't be allowed to share memory strands with any of his House-siblings, lest they be contaminated.

Turning away from the bed, Father Crocker’s attention caught and lingered on John. His child, yet not his child. Jake, Jade, and Jane’s sibling, yet not their sibling.

John’s face was set in sharp lines, grim as though with sympathy and worry, but Father Crocker saw edges of a darkness there, like they were contemplating things best not thought about. Their lips were pursed in a moue of dissatisfaction, studying Jake unconscious and prone on the bed with something dangerous. Father Crocker nearly reached out to him to stop them—from what, he wasn’t certain, but before he could, John shot him a slippery smile and left the room, shoulders pulled back stiffly.

No.

No, Father Crocker thought, hardening his heart. I can't let any of them get into this new danger. Not when we still don't understand what's wrong within us.

 


	2. Stem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mission begins, and almost immediately comes across something impossible. With what is possibly the most important discovery in the last century or two, Sollux and Aradia begin to have foreboding feelings. The Lalondes appear, bored and relaxed in a lull that Rue Lalonde has the horrible feeling is only the calm before the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter, here we are! Sorry this took a while, I realized that I'd left something out and had an attack of perfectionism and wrote, then rewrote, then edited all of it.

Aradia

“Don’t even with me,” Aradia warned, watching Sollux approach around the corner. “Not unless you’re ready.”

Sollux grimaced. “Aradia—”

“No.”

He fidgeted, the very image of discomfort with his hands clasped over his belly and his chin pressed into his sternum. His shoulders rolled uncertainly, torn between rising protectively around his ears and squaring up in anticipation. Aradia watched him, and absent-mindedly wondered if both Damara and Mituna were hooked into the ship’s systems. She was almost a little remorseful of her decision to remain relatively passive in the actual breaking-up, and almost regretted her decision to break up with him in the first place. It wasn’t as though she’d completely moved on; she just knew when the relationship was over.

“I, uh… I’m sorry,” Sollux said lamely, still tense as though he were waiting for things to come to blows.

Aradia waited.

“I’m sorry for everything.” He grit his teeth. His hands balled into fists. “Like…like not going to help when you said you needed help, and for Vriska—”

“You couldn’t have controlled Vriska if your life depended on it,” Aradia corrected him swiftly.

“I should’ve been able to, since _your_ life depended on it.” Sollux muttered mulishly. “And I’m sorry I let it get to the point where we can’t—there’s no—it’s impossible to stay together.”

That was what Aradia had been waiting for. “I trusted you.”

“And I let you down.” He wobbled a bit, unable to meet her eyes. “It was only luck that you’d been scanned recently and that Megido could put you back together, and we both know that.”

“Did you ever get the full story on what happened?” Aradia asked.

“No.” Sollux admitted. “Just bits and pieces—that Vriska did it, and that you sort of knew it was coming, and you called for help from me because I was closest but I didn’t listen.”

“Vriska and I had a fight.” Aradia waited for that to sink in before going on. “I mocked her, perhaps one time too many. I used that program you made me, the one that made the ship seem haunted, and she overreacted.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know Vriska was afraid of ghosts, though I don’t think it would have stopped me if I had known.”

Sollux winced. “I wouldn’t have expected that either.”

“She overreacted.” Aradia propped her chin on the back of her hand. “Hugely. It started a chase. I don’t know how or when I realized she was going overboard, that she’d kill me if she could, but that was when I called you. You didn’t pick up. Vriska got close enough and blew me out of the sky, so to speak. My ship sent out an automated distress call and my ship was picked up a while later and they built a new body.”

“Oh.”

“We only know what happened because my ship recorded the conversation and large parts of it remained intact. Lucky me.” Still curious and a bit annoyed, she finally asked the question that had been bothering her. “How didn’t you know? You could’ve hacked the records easily, right?”

Sollux was silent for a while, long enough that Aradia almost worried he hadn’t understood her. When he spoke, it was slow, halting, and dripping with guilt. “I didn’t try.”

“Not feeling up to it or…?” she trailed off, waving a hand.

“Not feeling up to it and I, uh, didn’t want to see you die. I’m not like Karkat or Terezi. I don’t punish myself.”

“You don’t torment yourself by seeking out every detail of what happened because you fucked up.” Aradia translated. “So you avoided the recording and any mention of my death or any reminder, including me. What did Terezi say?”

“She was patient at first, then got mad, then mostly gave up trying to get me to talk about it. Karkat was actually the one who was really pushy about it.”

“It’s a relationship thing,” Aradia snorted. “Of course he got all pushy about it. Did he want you to try and get back together with me, or did he just want us to talk it out?”

“I’m not 100% sure, but I think he wanted us to talk and get back together. At least right after it happened.” Sollux glanced up at her, expression a little smoother now that the focus of the conversation wasn’t her death. “Later he gave up a little and just wanted us to talk. I also think he wanted to smooth things out so Terezi would like him. Or something. To compete with her.”

“He’s still angling for a pitch relationship?” Aradia asked. _Stars preserve._ “Does Terezi know he has a crush on her? I don’t see how she couldn’t, but what does she think?”

“She knows, but she’s not sure how to turn him down.” Sollux grimaced. “Or if he’ll accept it if she does. She won’t say anything close to a yes, though, she’s pretty committed to that Crocker kid.”

“I should hope so, since they’re _married._ ” Really. Karkat needed to give up on her. Short of John dying an untimely and painful death, Terezi wouldn’t be open to a new relationship, and even then Karkat wouldn’t be on the top of her list of prospects. “Off-topic, are Mituna and Damara handling the ship’s power?”

“Fuck! No! Just Mituna!” Sollux jumped, eyes going wide and alarmed. “Crap, crap, I have to go.” He made to run off, then stopped and turned back. “I—Aradia, we should break up.”

Aradia stared at him, bemused. Now was the time he picked to really get up his nerve? “Okay.”

He nodded feverishly. “Good. Yeah. I’ll—talk to you later.” He ran for it.

Aradia spun around in her seat. Thank the Stars that was over. Now. She had a ship’s systems to manage.

 

Feferi

Feferi kicked Cuttle into gear, speeding away from Meenah towards the finish line. Meenah shot her a spiky, irritated message (cheater!!) but pressed duly onwards. Feferi could just imagine her sister’s tongue sticking out, petty and childish, and grinned.

This was a better day than they’d had in a while—no Cronus or Eridan to stir the pot, they’d both been doing work on Condescension and beyond and had the cheer that came from mutual frustrations excised through competition and adrenaline.

“You betta watch your back, fishy!” Meenah hollered at her through the open radio link. “I’m going to catch you!”

“Go ahead and try!” Feferi flung her arms up in the air, knowing that Meenah couldn’t see her and not caring in the slightest. “Come on, or have you gotten slow running away from Cronus all the time?” Out of the corner of her eye she saw that they were veering dangerously close to Ouroburos space. She dismissed the thought. Not like it would matter that much. It’d been centuries since anyone’d ventured into their area from Ouroburos space.

“I’ve gotten sick of racing your fat bass!” Meenah made a spitting noise. “Just you watch, miss—”

Meenah nearly caught up to Feferi, cackling with glee, and she jolted herself back into reality, jetting right up to the edge of the cleft shape of Ouroburos space, where she nearly hit a ship.

Feferi froze in place, staring in slightly horrified disbelief at the readings and the ship projected in the viewscreen. It was rust red and forest green, massive and spiky, with a curving mirrored hull. Two odd shapes, twinned on opposite sides of the ship right in the front, thrust forward in spiral curves. Meenah skidded to a stop behind her, pelting her with questions about what was going on, but Feferi’s attention was arrested more by what the ship was doing.

It was hailing her.

She accepted the call with trepidation, cutting off her communications with Meenah at the same time. An avatar materialized of a girl a good amount taller than Feferi, with long bushy black hair, rust red eyes and skinsuit, and curling horns like the ship sides.

“This is the Caliborn-House ship _Forbidden Tantalus_ , manned by Damara and Aradia of House Megido—the House of Quartz. May I ask your name and affiliation?”

Feferi jumped. It spoke Standard!

Aradia and Damara were weird names.

“I am Feferi Peixes.” She told the girl, sitting up straight and dignified in her seat. She folded her hands in her lap and flared her fins. The girl raised an eyebrow.

“Peixes? Are you from one of the Calliope civilizations?” she asked. “From which sector?”

“What? No. Sector? There’re only—” Feferi stopped. Her fins fluttered in agitation. “Unless you’re from Ouroburos space.”

“Huh?” the girl said. “Miss, just please tell us where you’re from and why you’re in Deadspace. I can see another ship behind you. That must be a friend of yours? Can you tell us where they’re from?”

“That’s my sister,” Feferi answered, feeling more than a little protective. “She’s Meenah Peixes.”

“I don’t recognize the Peixes name. Are you perhaps mispronouncing it? Could you spell it in the standard lettering?”

“P-E-I-X-E-S.” Feferi watched the girl rummage around herself.

“No, that’s not in our database.” She glanced up. “Miss Peixes, do you have any other family name?”

Whoops. The girl was from Ouroburos Space. Feferi sent a short message to Meenah detailing what was happening.

A reply bleeped under her fingers a short few seconds later.

_Fish, I’m going to blow them out of the water._

_No, no!_ Feferi sent back. _I’m trying to end this peacefully!_

The girl was still waiting when she looked back up. “Sorry. No, I don’t.”

“I’m Aradia Megido.” She said, still prim and polite. “Could you come onto our ship so that we could discuss the matter further? We’re on a mission, and we’re really supposed to send any wayward souls we find homeward.”

Against her every instinct, Feferi nodded slowly. “Sure. Do you have a docking bay I could enter?”

“Yes. Around our leeward side—right under the Ramshorn, see?”

Feferi could see a bay opening underneath one of the spiral protrusions.

“All right, I’m going in. See you in a few minutes?”

Aradia’s avatar stayed there with a bright smile and open eyes. “I’ll guide you up to the bridge once you’ve made it in.”

Feferi pushed her ship around and slipped into the bay, landing with a feather-light bump. She was good at landings. Aradia’s avatar clapped a few times.

“Good flying. We’re pressurizing the bay now.”

After a few minutes, Cuttle told her the pressure outside of the ship was just slightly less than the pressure inside. She unbuckled her harness and picked up a handheld communicator, satchel, and a snug little gun—just in case!

Aradia’s avatar winked out only when Feferi commanded the exterior door to open. Aradia herself was waiting just outside of the door.

Unlike her avatar, Aradia was clearly robotic. She had a carefully, elegantly made body—beautiful, really—with sculpted metallic hair, corrugated horns, pin-thin wrists and joints. She was similar enough to the avatar that she was immediately recognizable, but had a grace and ethereal symmetry and proportion that was otherworldly and simply impossible for an organic form to achieve.

Feferi stepped down to her and inclined her head in a nod. Aradia(bot?) held out her hand for a shake, which Feferi took, and upon releasing her began to walk. She asked questions only when they’d left the bay and made it into a brightly-lit fluorescent capsule that she said was the transport medium of the ship.

“You’re Feferi Peixes?”

“Yes!” Feferi smiled brightly, wishing she was wearing better than her fuchsia skinsuit and the pastel blue-and-green blanket as a dress. Or that she’d tried to tame her hair. Aradia was intensely beautiful, even more so than Feferi could have imagined from flat-footers.

“Great! You live in this area?”

“A ways away,” Feferi replied evasively. Aradia cocked her head slightly. Oops. She’d noticed.

“Could you help us define a few landmarks?” Aradia asked, opting to ignore the obvious deflection.

“I could. Which do you need to know?”

“We’ll show you images. Could you recognize them from optics?”

“Any way is fine.”

The capsule stopped moving and the wall opened, presenting to Feferi a room of rust-red metal furnished with dark green. The dashboard and viewscreen took up the better part of the room, which centered around a pair of columnar tanks.

Feferi’s eyes shot to the people in the tanks. Unlike Aradia and the ship’s color scheme, they wore mustard-yellow skinsuits with black-banded embellishments, and they floated peaceably, suspended in the fluid of the tank by multiple cords and cables attached to their limbs and faces. Four-horned, tall, and slender, red and blue sparks popped in the fluid around them.

“These are Sollux and Mituna Captor.” Aradia introduced. “And here is my House-sister, Damara.”

Damara was a good pair of hands taller than Aradia, and by extension nearly that much taller than Feferi. Aside from that and her hair flowing on a startling gradient from black to red, she was identical to Aradia’s avatar—equally as pretty, to Feferi’s continued chagrin and self-consciousness. She smiled too-widely and shook Feferi’s hand.

“Welcome.”

Feferi nodded to them all. “Thank you. It’s nice to meet you, Damara. Hello, Sollux and Mituna. I’m Feferi.”

“Yes.” Damara turned on her heel and stalked to the central control panel. Aradia sighed.

“Could you identify this?”

There was a table directly between the two tanks. Above it rotated a low-resolution image of Condescension, clearly taken from as far away as Ouroburos Space.

Oops. They were definitely from Ouroburos Space.

“That’s the Imperious Condescension.” Feferi said, ignoring Damara’s loud snort of disbelief and flip around to stare at her. “It’s my home.”

“It gives off life signs.” Aradia said, voice frankly disbelieving.

“It had a medbay that was originally intended to be capable of carrying cloned bodies to maintain the longevity of our House.” Feferi leaned forward. “After most of us died, it went a little wild. And we decided to cultivate tissue and blood vessels along the interior of our corridors to help contain fluids and keep them filtered. You know, keep it clean? We were aquatic pre-pupation, so it was important.”

“It’s flooded?” Aradia asked.

“There’s an exterior of stone and metal. You can see that.” Feferi used her communicator to pull a better image of Condescension up. “There’s a vacuum level beneath each opening, to keep the pressure from falling, and then the inside of that second doorway is lined with tissue and flooded, and that’s a shell that entirely surrounds the ship proper, where we live. The rest of it alternates between water-filled and tissue-lined and clean and steel. Our ships are mostly air-based, with a few exceptions.”

“Exceptions?” Aradia prodded.

“Our friends, Cronus and Eridan, they have fluid cockpits in their ships, and their homes are nearly entirely flooded. They didn’t pupate into amphibious forms, so the only air-filled bays in their home were built for myself and Meenah.”

Aradia nodded slowly. “Well, this is a first.”

“Oh?”

“I can’t say I’ve met mutant blooded aquatic trolls before!” she turned to Feferi cheerfully, expression unchanging though her tone jumped. “You look very much like myself, aside from your fins and—what’s your blood color? Is it the same as the one on your skinsuit?”

“Yeah, fuchsia!” Feferi pulled down on her lip to show the soft fuchsia tissue lining her mouth. “We speak a language that can be heard underwater, too.”

“Like Crocker or Lamiceae’s languages.” Aradia folded her hands in front of her face. “Amazing. I’d love to see your home! Could I?”

“You absolutely could!” Feferi assured her, informing Meenah of the incoming guests. “We haven’t had guests in forever! I’d like to talk to you guys, too. About the place you live. And stuff.”

Meenah’s response could be smoothly summarized as “Oh, shell no”, but Feferi only offered to show them where the Forbidden Tantalus could be taken to dock in Condescension.

Sollux

The ship was deafeningly quiet as they travelled. Sollux darted a glance at the screen where Feferi’s sister’s image relaxed, ignoring them. Damara, rather pointedly, sat with her back to the screen.

From the moment Meenah had appeared on the screen, Damara had been contemptuous and vicious. Sollux had to admit, she had some good points; Meenah acted like the kind of person with a nasty streak and had an air of a casual lack of regret, just the sort of thing Damara hated. She’d been the one in charge of whether or not they could come onboard, though, so Aradia made the executive decision that Damara would not be on the expedition team.

Meenah suddenly jerked in her seat and groaned, hands flying up. “Oh, _sure,_ show up now, why don’t you?”

“What?” Feferi asked.

With a beep, something overrode _Forbidden Tantalus’_ controls and an avatar swept onto the bridge, swooping into a bow before Aradia. It was a small troll—maybe Terezi’s height—and bony-skinny, like a Captor or Makara. He was a violetblood with large fins that were more membrane than substance and purple-dyed streaks in his hair, horns low to his head and zig-zagging, points hidden at the back of his skull.

“Nice to meet you.” He said coolly, tone suggesting that it was anything but.

Sollux hated him almost instinctively. He pushed all of the right buttons just from appearance, and Sollux had the sneaking suspicion that the tendency wouldn’t decrease with time _._

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Aradia asked pleasantly.

“Eridan Ampora.” He replied, full of self-importance. “And you are?”

Aradia began to answer, getting through just her and Sollux’s names before he cut her off. “Never mind. What are you doing here?”

It wasn’t so much his rudeness as his blatant hostility that rankled Sollux into standing. “Investigating a problem, dipshit.”

“Oh, what problem? Something existing that you don’t own?”

“Something that could be dangerous.”

“Oh, it could be dangerous!” Eridan mocked. “It could be dangerous like a pufferfish, so you go in and corner the locals and—no, sorry, that’s par for the course, isn’t it? Not like you haven’t done it before.”

 “Eridan!” Feferi snapped. His mouth clicked shut audibly, and Sollux had the pleasure of watching him pale slightly. So Feferi intimidated this ridiculous buffoon.

“Yes, Fef?”

“Stop that. They did nothing wrong. They were investigating something they thought might be dangerous! You’d do the same!”

Eridan scowled. “I would if it came into our space! Not just prance willy-nilly into someone else’s!”

“No, you would.” Feferi frowned at him. “You and your ridiculous science and theories. It’s not even accurate science!”

“It is so!” Eridan puffed up, reminding Sollux of one of the small, fluffy animals on Nitram’s homeworld when it was threatened. Don’t laugh, Sollux. Don’t laugh. Don’t let him see how ridiculous he is, this is priceless.

“It’s more accurate than Cronus’, but that’s not saying much.” Feferi stuck out her hip. “We’re going to Condescension, we’re going to talk about the ship, and then maybe communicate with their headquarters to make sure they know we don’t give a flying fish about them.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sollux saw Damara slowly mouthing ‘flying fish’ with an expression of mixed disbelief and delight. Aradia bopped her on the arm, provoking a long-suffering expression.

Eridan, however, instantly became cagey. “Well. If they’re going to talk about Condescension, it only makes sense they should come down here, too.”

“Oh?” Feferi asked sweetly, fluttering her second eyelid. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Because Orphaner’s a warship.” Eridan made a face. “And if there’s anything flat-footers are good at, it’s finding an excuse for a war. A good one would be withholding weapons.”

“Then shouldn’t they also fly in to Dualscar?” she cocked her head challengingly.

“That’s not a battleship, that’s a… a…” Eridan screwed up his face. “A _ship/hold/strategist/home._ ”

Sollux jumped. That had been Captor. That had been an enantiotropic joining of two Captor words.

“Yeah, could you translate?” Eridan asked. “I’m not so great at translating my language—somatic language, you know how it is—to Standard, and that’s the closest spoken I can handle.”

Sollux’s ears turned yellow when he noticed Feferi, Damara, and Aradia staring at him. Mituna made a rude noise from his tank.

“It’s…” Sollux scrabbled for the words. “Like the Crocker homeship. It’s a home with a consciousness, an AI, that’s also a ship, but a storage and research place.”

Aradia nodded slowly. “Ah, that makes sense. No, we wouldn’t need to see that, Ampora. Unless you or any others live there regularly?”

Eridan made a face. “Nah, only Cro. And he’s a little bitch who’s almost never there. You care to go there? It’s not worth it.”

“You’re _the little bitch.”_ Damara grumbled in Megido. Eridan frowned.

“Rude. Rest assured, Dams, you’d like Cro a lot less than you like me. Which is saying something, ‘cause I’m not super cuddly.”

No, he certainly wasn’t. Sollux ground his teeth. “How do you even know our House-tongues?”

“Research.” Eridan said with a carefully-scripted hip pop and lazy grin. “It’s not like it was _hard_ or anything.”

Aradia glanced at Sollux and he got the feeling she was hiding a giggle or some humor-response. He tried very hard to restrain himself from saying anything rash, aware that Eridan was high-blooded enough to be nearly complimentary with him, which implied that he was probably strong enough to break Sollux like a twig.

“Oh, sorry.” He replied coolly. “Did you ever get the hang of Pyrope? I heard it was, ah, _agglutinated_ and _tonal?_ ”

Eridan’s cool grin dropped like a rock and he scowled. “You try learnin’ to be fluent in that shit.” He accused.

“Fuck, no. I don’t even try. Leave it to the Pyropes. Tripthongs are not my problem.”

“Okay, okay, stop!” Feferi said. He glanced over at her to see her laughing behind her hand. “We’re heading into Condescension now, Eridan. Are you going to invite them onboard Orphaner?”

Eridan frowned sulkily. “Sure, Fef. They’re welcome onboard. Just shoot me a notice when you get there and I’ll let you in.”

“And should I want to look at this… Dualscar?” Aradia asked delicately.

“Ask Cro. I don’t go there ever. Good luck getting through him without promisin’ to sleep with him at some point. Going now, Fef, there’s a leak down in the central cavity and I need to go look at it.” Eridan tossed his head. “Call when you get close.”

His avatar winked out and Sollux slammed his head against the dashboard, letting out a hissing, strangled screech that choked off abruptly halfway through. Feferi lost it and started laughing openly.

_Fuck him,_ Sollux thought savagely, _fuck him right in the stupid gills._

 

Karkat

The Vantas Reunion was, always and eternally, unspeakably boring. Karatous, the current Acolyte droned on and on in Vantas’ tongue, yammering about mercy and union and praising the Ten Thousand Reunion to the high high heavens even though he knew that no one in the room would ever go to it.

Karkat tried to sneak his legs up on the table, failing as Kankri gave him a sharp look from across the room, where Unity’s children sat. Karkat stuck his tongue out and crossed his ankles over the table and his arms over his chest.

It wasn’t that Karkat didn’t agree with the speaker. The Ten Thousand Reunion was vitally important, giving no more import or attention to any one bloodline or color than any other, allowing the chemical mingling of memories between everyone as equals. Hell, Karkat loved the reunion.

It was just so… fucking _annoying_ hearing about it time after time after time and knowing they could never go to it. He couldn’t complain to anyone, frustratingly enough. Maybe Terezi, but the Pyropes were… yeah. And she was too close to Crocker. Sollux was just not an option. Neither were Kanaya, Porrim, Latula, any of the other Vantases…

He could potentially complain at the Leijons. Nepeta, Meulin. They were in on everything he was. They knew just how frustrating it all was. He could also complain to Tavros, who’d understand. Sort of.

But of his closest friends, all were either too dangerous or members of the Reunion, which frustrated Karkat, who was naturally given to complaining. Loudly. With much invective. And profanity.

Karatous derailed himself by going on to talk about “the humans”. Karkat nearly stood and walked out right then and there.

Humans, as a term, was something the Calliopaeans never used anymore. It was doubtful, for example, that you could call Galodi and Crocker the same species. They were different in attitude, physiology, philosophy, neurobiology, and basically everything. They’d had to set down _boundary spheres_ in order to prevent conflicts after the Colamér massacre.

Colamér. Karkat had hardly thought the word before the acolyte switched tracks and started talking about it. Karkat tuned back in.

“—the atrocities there committed. It is to my great sorrow to say that Megido and Pyrope have finally uncovered the trench where Gaebril’s research station had been. Almost nothing remains, which is unsurprising but tragic. It is our hope that the remains of our Housefather will be recovered to be interred on our planet.”

Or cremated. Karkat rolled his eyes and caught Kankri’s chest inflating, biting his lips before he exploded into a rant or a preachy little… whatever, long even for Unity. Karkat didn’t know what it would be on, but it would be long-winded and annoying.

“Jacob Harley’s remains were recently found.” Karatous continued. “Tepayet, a planet on the exterior fringes of the Kari’id and Kim spheres, was discovered to have a stasis egg containing his corpse. He is unfortunately rather deceased, so he cannot stand trial for the massacre. His body will be taken to the Barrens at the request of Serket.

“In this moment, I’d like to reiterate why the efforts and that justice being brought to Jacob Harley are so important. Jacob Harley’s actions were reprehensible. Singlehandedly, one man took down three Houses and crippled another. Worse yet, Colamér, despite being Crocker’s homeworld, was on its way to becoming a center of unity. The scientific advancements on Colamér were unparalleled. He betrayed and injured hundreds of Houses after patronizing their unification and preservation efforts. Effectively, he murdered movements towards peace in the womb by raising tensions between Houses with historical conflicts. It wasn’t until the Colamér Massacre that he was discovered as seeding this discontent.

“He destroyed centuries’ worth of work on Deadspace artefacts and a tenuous peace between Calibornite and Calliopaean Houses. Because of him, Housefather Vantas died and his dreams were not fulfilled for another several hundred years.” The acolyte folded his hands over his abdomen coolly. “Fortunately, they have now been fulfilled. This reunion is only another sign of our peaceful coexistence. It is my deepest hope that very soon—perhaps even within a year—we will not have to live with our Housefather’s name and legacy in confidence.”

The auditorium shifted, uncomfortable, and two of his batch-brothers smiled tightly as he took his seat. Karkat frowned. That had been unusually aggressive of Karatous.

To the side, Kankri’s lips were pressed in a thin line. Karkat sympathized. Karatous might as well have wished death on House Crocker. With the bottleneck their numbers had fallen to, they were a hop, skip, and a jump from extinction, but it still wasn’t likely that they’d vanish so quickly.

Karkat put the secret meetings of the Sufferance batch out of his mind. They _wouldn’t._

Then again, Karatous was moirailled to one of Karkat’s batch.

_Vantas kept their peace._

Karkat gritted his teeth against the rage that rose, unbidden, every time he thought of their House’s vow against violence. By their nature, trolls were violent and horrible. By their nature, Vantas was different from most. By his nature, Karkat seemed to go against everything that Vantas hoped for, even with how Sufferance were raised

Scrambling for a distraction, Karkat made a face at Kankri. Kankri took the bait altogether too rapidly, glowering at him and tapping on his whistle threateningly. Karkat smiled.

The clone-elders each finished their event-required platitudes while Kankri signed angry lectures and disapproval at Karkat, who happily responded with profanity and insults. Kankri found him unspeakably vile and violent. Probably why they spent so much time together. Karkat loved his asshole older brother.

Halfway through a particularly vitriolic response, Vankre grabbed Karkat’s hand and dragged it down, resting it under his calf. He signed lazily at Kankri, shutting him up. Karkat frowned at him.

“Karkles,” he signed (the nickname he’d picked up from Terezi, how annoying), “That’s not nice.”

Karkat slumped in his chair. “I’m bored, Vankre.” He signed one-handed, knowing his brother would understand.

“So are we all, darling.” Vankre yawned. “How’s that flushcrush of yours?”

“Terezi is none of your business. And it’s not flushed.”

“It’s flushed, or it’s doomed to failure. I hear that Crocker child asked for her hand.”

John Crocker had, in fact, asked Terezi for a handfasting. Karkat had been there when Sollux, as Terezi’s moirail, had tied the strand over their hands. He’d seen her ram a piece of cake into John’s face and kiss them while they were still spitting frosting out. He’d seen Crocker wreak havoc on her carefully-ordered soft toys, keeping them in line but moving them out of order, mix salt and sugar so she’d accidentally drunk salty-sweet coffee, offer her colorful candies whose flavors didn’t match up to color. His mood darkened. “So fucking what? I’m better than them. Any idiot could see that.”

“Any _idiot_ , maybe, but _she_ surpasses others in acuity.” Vankre raised an eyebrow. “Are you done mooning over her, or are you going to need an auspistice?”

That Vankre brought Terezi up at all rankled Karkat. That he brought it up as though his failure at pursuing her were inevitable pissed him the fuck off. “Fuck off, Vankre. The day I get into a relationship with you is the day I shoot myself.”

Vankre blew him a kiss. “Have a good run there.”

Karkat shot him the bird. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Now there’s an idea. Krevan, a moment?”

Karkat gagged as Vankre stood up and strode across the room to his batch-twin. Those two were disgusting. Karkat was almost grateful he didn’t have any quadrants. That level of sappiness would be horrible.

Awesome. He meant awesome. Karkat fucking wished he had a quadrant.

Kankri slipped into Vankre’s vacated seat, folding his hands primly in his lap. “I hope he gave you a good talking-to, Karkat. You’re quite vulgar.”

Karkat grunted and closed his eyes. His asshole little brother could cool his jets and hold his horses.

“I need to ask you,” Kankri leaned forward slightly, “About the Captor boy you play with. Your flushcrush’s moirail.”

“Sollux?” Karkat cracked an eye open. Kankri watched him, looking uncomfortable. “What about Sollux? And I’m not flushed for Terezi.”

“Sollux is—how do I break this—on a mission into Deadspace with Mituna Captor and two Megidos. A mission ordained by Crocker.”

Karkat kicked his legs down, nearly falling out of his chair. “What the shit?”

Kankri shook his head, biting his lips uncomfortably. “Tavros told me. He was speaking with Gamzee, who had been speaking with Kurloz, who speaks only to Meulin, who spoke with Latula, and you know Mituna tells her everything.”

“That many people, it’s probably just fucking rumors,” Karkat grunted.

“Aradia spoke of it with Equius, who shared it with me.” Kankri shook his head. “It seems true.”

“Then he’s…” Karkat frowned. “That’s _crazy._ Why would Sollux do that?”

“Because Father Crocker himself asked them. The mission is in confidence, at least until the findings are released, as with all Crocker missions. It disturbs me.”

“Yeah. The only reason they’d want Megidos and Captors would be for their psionics.” Which meant the mission was dangerous. Did Terezi know? She’d want to know.

But it was Crocker, which meant she’d go to John, and John could say whatever the fuck he wanted and distract her enough that she’d forget everything. Shit.

“That’s not right.” Karkat stood. “Come on. You said Tavros told you?”

“Yes.” Kankri stood and followed, carmine robes billowing out behind him. “The Nitram reunion is well over. He should be in _Adios Torero_.”

Karkat walked briskly, ignoring how uncomfortably people regarded them along the way. Even with House Vantas’s rise to power and continued status, it had taken a long time for the trolls to get over their inborn prejudices against the mutant red of their blood, so similar to that of humans. The Reunion dress code didn’t help. He shucked his robe and threw it over his shoulder.

Kankri caught up to him, breath coming a little quickly. “Karkat! Slow down! There’s no emergency!”

“It’s Crocker. There’s always a goddamn emergency.” He yanked the small red-and-grey cap off of his horns and jammed it in his pocket. “And Tavros is… Tavros. He tells the wrong person, he screws the barkbeast.”

Kankri glanced at him sideways, disapprovingly. “You’re disgusting.”

“So you’ve mentioned.” Karkat snarked. “Go away, if you’re so bothered by it.”

“No. As it is an aspect of the Sufferance Batches, I can tolerate it.” Kankri said stiffly. “Are you comfortable now?”

Karkat nodded absently. “Do you want to strip your robes? We can stop by your respite block.”

“No. I am content.” Kankri whipped around the corner almost faster than Karkat could, despite his shorter legs. “They will not hinder me.”

The Nitram dock was massive, much larger than Vantas’. They entered in and immediately began sprinting down the dock.

Tavros’ ship was—bad luck—at the very end of it. Karkat huffed angrily down the hall, glaring at the airlocks and the startled or amused Nitrams watching them run past. A few laughed and pointed, but largely they just stepped out of the way with ridiculous grins to avoid Kankri’s flapping robes.

House Nitram was full of pan-baked idiots. Seriously. Father’s sake, their Housefather had consorted with goddamned Mindfang _and_ the Grand Highblood.

_Adios Torero_ came into sight at last, airlock cracked open. Tavros was in, like Karkat had hoped. He stopped dead in front of the ramp, took a deep breath, and strolled in nonchalantly.

Tavros was doing something on a handheld screen, probably Fiduspawn or the Calliopaean Pokey-mom. Whatever. Pokey-something. He looked up when Karkat and Kankri came in, smile dimming a moment before surging back. He waved enthusiastically, stylus nearly falling from his hand.

“Karkat! Kankri! It’s, uh, really great to see you guys!” he buzzed his chair a little closer. “How was the, uh, reunion?”

“Fine.” Karkat dismissed. “Tavros, did Sollux and Aradia really go on a Crocker mission?”

Tavros nodded, looking conflicted. “Uhuh. Aradia, she, uh, talked to me about it too. It’s a, uh, Deadspace thing. Artefacts, right up her alley. Like she said.” His ears flicked up and then down, belying his cheer. “She said she’ll, uh, send me pictures. And things.”

So it was completely true. Nothing to be done about it. Karkat prayed they got back in one piece. “Wow. She couldn’t tell you anything else?”

Tavros shook his head regretfully. “No. Uh, Crocker didn’t want there to be much, uh, commotion around it. Whatever they found.”

Karkat sat down on a bench, crossing his legs at the ankles. Kankri took his seat just next to him “That’s just great.”

Tavros frowned. “Why? The Crockers aren’t, uh, that bad. Jade talked to me. About Fiduspawn. She played with me, too. And Jane and John, are really nice. They helped me with, uh, Vriska. They wouldn’t want to, uh, get Sollux and Aradia into trouble.”

“But it was Father Crocker, right?” the man was a cipher. As far as anyone knew, his only objective was the continued survival of the House, but...

Tavros nodded slowly. “But he’s pretty, uh, nice too. And she said she’d gotten, all the information, she needed. They should be, uh, fine.”

Karkat breathed out slowly. “That’s fucking fantastic.” Kankri gave him a sharp look. “What?”

“Best not to make assumptions.” Kankri said coolly. “For all we know, it was a perfectly innocent mission.”

“Into Deadspace.”

Kankri grimaced. “It’s possible. They’re right to be wary. They’re down to five members, after all.”

“Hmph.” Karkat crossed his arms. “Shit! I shouldn’t have left them there.”

“They’re adults. They can take care of themselves.”

Karkat stared daggers into Kankri’s eyes. “Oh, sure. They can. Sollux is such a pushover—”

“Aradia can take care of herself with energy to spare for the others, Karkat. And if we get too worried, you can talk to your contacts in Lalonde, can’t you? They’ll help you out. After all, House Crocker listens to them.”

 

Rue

Rue Lalonde mentally traced her way through the halls of the keep slowly. She was not stalling. Nope, not her. She’d never stall.

Rhea, seated neatly on a bench not two meters away, smiled sweetly. “Perhaps you should get going, sister. It’s nice to be on time.”

Rue coughed and turned her back on Rhea, pretending not to hear her.

“Perhaps that’s only my opinion, though.” Rhea resumed her knitting.

“Maybe I should,” Rue relented. “Rhea, what am I supposed to even talk about?”

“The House. Its successes. Failures. What happened in the last forty years.”

Rue fluttered around anxiously. “But there isn’t that much! And what there is, it’s just… not important.”

Rhea sighed. “The entire House is in there, sister. At least make an effort.”

“But what do I _say?_ ”

Rhea’s expression indicated that she was close to losing her temper. “Ask Hal. Not me. I’m not your advisor.”

“He isn’t either.” Rue stuck out her bottom lip. “Fine. Hal!”

In a blink of electric light, Hal’s elegant avatar appeared hovering at shoulder height, seated on air. He winked at her through oddly-translucent glasses. Probably stylistic. Dietrich had never taken his shades off, but Hal had no need for them.

“Whatcha need, Rue-babe?”

Rhea turned her head down. The clicking of needles increased in pace and volume.

“What should I talk to the House about?” Rue scrubbed her fingers through her hair. “We’re _on Sadaji._ Everyone came home for this. And I don’t know what to say. What do I _say?_ ”

Hal stared at her. “I. Uh, talk about… hm. You’re right, it’s been boring recently. Huh. The… wow, I’m out of ideas.”

“I thought you were omniscient!”

“Omniscience doesn’t help when there’s nothing _to_ know!” he flailed a little. “Don’t look at me! Things have been going well! No one’s died recently! I’m not new news, I’m old news!”

“Yes you are.” Rhea muttered without looking up. Hal put on a betrayed expression.

“That’s hurtful. But there just isn’t much to talk about!”

Someone coughed behind them, accompanied by two sharp knocks on the open door. Rue jumped and whirled with a guilty grin on her face.

“Housemother.” Dante raised an eyebrow over his shades. “You’re well?”

“I’m fine, _dad._ ” She flapped her hands at him. “Quick! What do I talk about?”

Dante shook his head with a groan. “Rue, you asked for this. I’m staying the fuck out of this. Not touching it with a ten-foot pole. Or any-foot pole. The poles are off this issue. No poles.”

Rue turned her head to the sky. Only a few stars could be seen from Sadaji’s light side, but on the dark side there were hundreds. No. Bad distractibility. She had _things to do._ “Dante, I’ve got nothing to say, there’s a meeting in ten minutes, and Hal and Rhea are being dirty pessimists.”

“Then start jabbering about your science things. You’re doing science things, right? You’re always doing science things. I’m proud of you. Good. Science. Things, right.” Dante shrugged.

“That wasn’t smooth.” Rhea noted. “You’ll have to do better than that. Dear.”

“It was so smooth.” He shot back.

“About as smooth as your re-entry into Talamvir.”

Dante folded his arms and huffed. “I don’t know why I even married you.”

“Dad, gross.” Rue threw her arms into the air. “I still don’t have anything to talk about!”

“We’re not married.” Rhea hissed in the silence following. “ _Darling.”_

“Technically, we are.” He whispered back. “By law. _Honeybun.”_

“Mom, dad, no!”

“ _Humans._ ” Hal drawled. “You’re twins. You can’t be married.”

Dante made a face. “Right, that all happened after Dietrich died. We are. I mean, married, obviously we’re actually twins, but we are married. By law. Thank the Light they revoked the ‘be fruitful and reproduce’ clause.”

“Dad! Don’t make me think about that!” Rue waved her arms at him, not certain if she's doing it to get his attention or doing it to work off some of her nervous energy. “What do I _say?_ ”

“Speak about… about the movements in Galodi space to make implants mandatory neonatal things.” Rhea shrugged. “It’s important.”

“And maybe about how paranoid _some people_ are about me.” Hal piped up. “Still won’t let me talk to them brain-to-brain. _So_ discriminatory. I can’t stand it. What am I even going to do to them?”

“I’m not certain,” Rhea said wryly. “You could… oh, speaking hypothetically, I know… hack their user accounts for the communication software and plague others with solicitations.”

“I would never do anything so crude.” Hal huffed. “Why are you married to Dante?”

Rue turned her head in time to see Dante cover his face with his hand. “Whoa, dude. Not cool. Insulting my right to be her hubby?”

“I wouldn’t have married you if I’d had a choice,” Rhea pointed out. “I would have pale-wed Jonathan.”

“I still need help here,” Rue reminded them.

“ _I_ gave you ideas.” Hal remarked. “Rue, really though, talk to them about me. It’s _annoying._ I can’t talk to them, or it’s hard to. I have to keep hacking someone else’s handle to talk to people.”

“Make your own?” Rhea suggested lightly.

“No.” Hal sagged, sticking out his bottom lip. “The AI that governs it is boring.”

“Then you made your own bed. Lie in it.” Rhea leaned back and frowned. “I hate how this thing doesn’t have a back. Dante, come here?”

“What?” his forehead wrinkled under the edge of his shades. “Why?”

“Because I asked you to, husband dearest.” Rhea beckoned him. “Come along.”

Dante sat down with a groan, back to her, and Rhea swung her legs up onto the edge of the bench, leaning back against him. “Ah, perfect. Thank you, darling.”

Dante yawned and dropped his head back to land on Rhea’s, producing an audible clunk.

“Watch your big fat head, dear.”

“Watch your… I don’t know. Your knitting needles.” Dante retorted lazily. “I’m going to take a nap.”

Useless. Rue left, scurrying down the corridor to the meeting hall.

Oh, why had they made the hall so huge? Sadaji was a large enough planet that it was okay, but the hollow echoing sounds of her feet on the floor made her cringe every time she ran down the hall even though she knew she owned it.

Dietrich used to walk down the hall sedately behind her, making enough noise that she didn’t feel pursued by him. But he was dead now, and she was alone addressing the House.

Dietrich. She missed him. Rhea and Dante didn’t like talking about him, but Rue missed him fiercely.

It was probably Rhea and Dante’s way of coping with Colamér. They didn’t want to think about how nearly he’d died, and how it had still killed him in the end. It was too hard to think about, she guessed.

Still. She remembered him when he’d first returned from Colamér after surviving days on his own in a small rescue capsule with no help. There yet hadn’t been any sign that something was wrong. The poison hadn’t started to eat him away from the inside out. To everyone’s eyes, he was returning unharmed, a nearly miraculous restoration from the dead. Rue had hugged him tightly, weeping into his shoulder with relief.

Moments later, Dante and Rhea had swept down on them like grim, concerned shadows. Their parents hadn’t come along, but Dante and Rhea were more than enough, in many ways more their parents than Lord and Lady Lalonde had ever been. Dante had, uncharacteristically, skipped out on his precious diplomatic meetings and taken them back to Sadaji personally. He’d called their parents and left a scathing, nasty message for them, and days later petitioned the current allied council of Calliope for custody of Dietrich and Rue.

Rue stopped at the doors to the hall. Dietrich had been the person closest to her in her entire life. They’d shared everything. Their relationships with others, their grievances, their quiet, guilty joys. Even if he’d started keeping secrets in the years before he died, they had still been closer to each other than to anyone else.

If he were still alive, he would be pushing open the doors in front of her, snorting at her unwillingness to go on. He’d make fun of her, pretend he was going to go do the speech for her, hang back at the last second just to let her know she wasn’t off the hook.

Whatever. She’d always been able to do the speech alone in the end. She could keep doing it even without Dietrich.

The auditorium was roaring with conversation, thousands of voices chattering. Rue could see from the stage that her children were playing in their own time, chattering with each other. Close to the stage, she spotted Roxy and Dirk. Dave was asleep on Roxy’s shoulder—par for the course, honestly—wearing half of a scarf that Rose was still knitting.

Rose really had taken after Rhea, hadn’t she? And Dave, after Dante. Perhaps that was why Roxy and Dirk sought them out in preference to their other siblings.

“Excuse me.”

The hall quieted, filled instead by the brush of cloth as her children found their seats.

“Hello. Thank you for coming here today.” Rue smiled down at them. “It’s wonderful to see everyone. I’m glad that we’re all still kicking, even those of you who locked themselves slightly older.”

Someone laughed.

“Well, let’s start. First order of business.” She glanced down at the papers. “How about… Delilah, Rayleigh. Could you tell me how your work in the corner sector went?”

Delilah and Rayleigh popped up in the back, slightly flushed. They were more intrepid than many of the others, but still got terrible stage fright. Rue felt a pang of regret for putting them in the spotlight.

“It went smoothly.” Rayleigh began, ever the professional. “My mission was, as some of you may or may not know, to escort one of the dignitaries from the Kari’id consortium to a peace meeting. Delilah’s was a routine planet-scaffold aid. They intersected when she requested assistance in order to complete the starwards side of their moon. It was large, and nights fairly short, but went off without a problem.”

Delilah nodded rapidly. “Yeah. It went great. The stuff shouldn’t break down for maybe centuries.”

“Wonderful.” Rhea cued them to sit down. “Now, as you know, the House of Birds still maintains a grip on the Five-JB sector, where Sadaji lies. Their sphere of influence, in fact, lies directly over us, as we forfeited our right to any claim beyond Sadaji. We are technically a subordinate government to them.

“I would like to ask you about one of their most recent movements. As you know, both the Belara and ourselves cannot survive without the aid of our implants. All of you were given implants upon creation, and myself and my siblings at birth. The Belara have recently begun implementing measures to insure the placement of these at birth. For all quasi, pseudo, and Old-Earthers who have ventured into interstellar travel within our sector.”

Rue paused, waited. There was a small hubbub that died back quickly.

“It would mean that the Belara gain the right to access our planet and to require a check of our physical aspects and our implants. Though it is a farce of a check, it still has legal weight. I am not certain of their rationale. It is probably to ensure facile introduction to the Ten Thousand Reunion for all sophont races. I have received, however, notice that they will be conducting an examination of our House. There is no deadline, only a requirement that it must be done. We will be submitting to this, but I would like to state this for your understanding. It will likely entail Belara physicians examining the coding for your health-regulating implants, and involves a requirement that you can interface with a simulation of beta-level or above. Hal has generously volunteered himself for this duty.” He _hadn’t,_ but she figured that this would be a fine way to compromise his request with the Housemembers’ sensibilities.

A few Housemembers looked disgruntled. She could already see Dirk trying to think up a loophole. So much like Dietrich—he hated interfacing with anything that had a will of its own, no matter how small.

“Thank you for your patience.” Rue finished graciously. “You are only required to stay here for another few days, to receive appointments and such for the checks of implants.”

She stepped off the stage, wobbling only a little on her flats, and made her way over to Dirk and Roxy. “I’m looking forward to seeing how you get out of the check-up, Dirk.”

Dirk’s brow creased. “I don’t like it.”

“You’ll have to.” She said sympathetically, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “All you four.”

“I’ll figure something out.” Dirk said, with a calm and confidence Rue doubted he felt.

Roxy giggled. “’course you will, Dirk-a-Dirk. You going to make sure me and Rosie and Davey don’t do the thing either?”

“Of course.” Dirk turned to Roxy, nonplussed when she ran a hand through his hair like Rue had a moment before. His expression twisted into one so like Dietrich’s that Rue couldn’t breathe for a moment. Not even Hal inspired this sort of reaction in her, or Rhea or Dante for that matter—Dirk had grown up so much more like Dietrich than anyone had expected.

She realized that she was staring at him, her genetic brother-son, and looked away. “Did you have any other concerns?”

If Dirk or Roxy noticed her change in mood, they didn’t mention it. “Nope!” Roxy said cheerfully. “Only, are you going to the Reunion this time ‘round?”

“Oh.” Rue’s heart sank. Another thing she couldn’t do. “Nah, sorry.”

“It’s all righty-oh, secret House business, right?” Roxy winked at her, silvery eyelashes glittering in the low light. “Aah, you have so many secrets! Do you really have to keep so many to be a Housemother?”

“Yeah.” Rue cracked a grin. “Sooo many secrets. Not even Rhea has this many secrets.”

“Ooh!” Roxy leaned forwards. “Oh, are Rhea and Dante going to do it?”

“I dunno. Depends on how they feel.” Rue shrugged, feeling a little painfully inadequate. “You two going?”

“We are.” Dirk butted in. _There_ was one point where he and Dietrich differed, at least. Dietrich had hated the mere idea of a Reunion. Dirk kept each meet religiously.

“You two better get your checkups over and done with, then.” Rue smiled at them. “And take care of yourselves! I’ve got to go back to Dante and Rhea now, but we’ll talk later, all right?”

“Later.” Roxy and Dirk said in unison, with differing inflection. They shot each other dirty looks and turned back to their siblings. Rue repressed the urge to sigh as she backed away and left the room, fielding the questions of her other children with aplomb.

They’d understand sooner or later what they had and why it was so important they be grateful for it.

 

Sollux

Eridan was at Orphaner, so Feferi and Meenah directed them out of Forbidden Tantalus into a cute ship called Culler, which was apparently Meenah’s favorite. Orphaner was perhaps forty light-hours away, which dilation easily compressed into minutes.

Orphaner was slightly smaller than Condescension, but ridged with vicious armor that looked like it could conceal hundreds of weapons. The top of it slid open, allowing Culler through, and then slammed shut.

"Are we going to land?" Sollux asked.

"Give Eridan a minute..." Feferi clucked. "There we go."

Something jagged yawned open in front of them, pitch black and violet. Sollux studied his ship’s reports as they entered.

Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to implant and grow flesh along the corridor (to cushion for an explosion?), and in all honesty it was effective as an intimidation technique; the pulsing cords and skin made Sollux feel like he was floating into someone’s mouth. Docking, an airlock opened in front of them. Feferi strode through without a care, and Aradia and Sollux followed with slightly more caution.

Unlike Condescension, Orphaner was very dim inside. They seemed to have entered a circular corridor, the internal wall of which was entirely taken over by a gigantic fish tank. They couldn't see anything inside of it for lack of internal lighting, but no doubt it was teeming with fish. The external wall was plated with polished enamel, delicate motifs and an odd script depicting figures doing a variety of things, all wrapped in glyph alphabets. An avatar appeared before them, a tall dark grey troll—Eridan. His avatar now wore a violet robe over his sweater, overmany weapons tucked faux-casually in the belt. Asshole.

Avatar illuminating the dark space, Eridan bowed cordially. "Orphaner greets you. What would you desire?”

“Don’t be formal!” Feferi laughed. “Oh, Eridan, it’s good to see you!”

“What, you can’t come meet us in person?” Sollux asked snidely. “Too important to travel across the ship.”

A flicker ran across Eridan’s face. “The drybanks are yours to peruse. An’ landdweller? I ain’t here at your beck an’ call. Shout if you need something.”

Sollux snorted loudly when Eridan vanished without another word. “Drama queen.”

“He is, but he means well.” Feferi reassured, though she frowned at the tanks. “He just has a… thing about Ouroburos Space.”

“Sure.”

Damara rapped on the glass of the fish tank. “How deep?”

“I’m not sure. Very deep, I’m certain.” Feferi glanced up, like she was trying to remember.

“Deep enough for him?” she suggested. Feferi puzzled and shrugged it off.

“I’m sure. He probably watches this place all the time.”

“Creep.” Sollux muttered.

“Hey now,” Feferi admonished. “He’s a very sweet guy! When he tries! Sometimes!”

“Suuuuure.” Sollux rolled his eyes. “He can fuck right off.”

Feferi covered her mouth with her hands, eyes dancing. “Weeeeell! You should make yourselves comfortable. There are plenty of places to stay around here. Oh! We should talk about food! Orphaner can synthesize pretty much anything we want it to if it has the biochemistry, but Aradia, do you need charging?”

“No need. I have a reactor in here.” She tapped her chest, the dull metal clinking testifying to its solidity. “Could you show us around?”

“Oh, of course!” Feferi threw her hands out to encompass the whole of the room. “This is the entrance hall—the tanks on either side are windows into the liquid interior of Orphaner. From here if you wanted to penetrate to vacuum, you’d have to burrow through nearly a kilometer of hull material—which, by the by, is _very_ dense. Orphaner was built to last, blah blah, yadda yadda, so on and so forth. Okay, this way.”

Sollux followed her, restraining a grin. Feferi was _cute._

The hall opened up into a much larger chamber. “Thiiiis room is the history room. That door off to the left opens to the computer centers, that room to the ship-bay, that one to the mess—and this one’s full of old history stuff.”

Aradia and Damara took an interest. “Where—”

“On the walls.” Feferi gestured them closer to one wall. “See here—this bit of the galaxy with eleven planets highlighted? Orphaner’s records say that’s where Meenah and I are from.”

“This is Caliborn’s Cloak!” Aradia exclaimed. “I knew it! You are a troll! Mutant, but definitely a troll!”

Feferi’s fins flicked out proudly. “Oh, you really think so? Meenah will be devastated. She thought we were unique.”

“You are,” Aradia reassured her. “There are no other pink-blooded trolls. Although that means that Eridan’s a violet blooded troll, so he’s definitely not unique. There’s a whole planet full of them.”

“That’s amazing!” Feferi clasped her hands in front of her, eyes nearly glowing. “Oh! Here, this place, right here? The little circle of stars. What do you call these?”

“That’s Calliope’s Veil.” She outlined a small branch of one of the arms.

“Is that what that’s called?” Feferi smiled at the region. “Gosh, it’s so pretty. What’s that system—the blue one right on the edge?”

Aradia sucked in a simulated breath. “That sun is Oijera. There’s only one habitable planet around it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Colamér.” Aradia shivered and a wave of cold swept over Sollux. “Don’t worry about it. It isn’t important.”

“Really? Why not?”

“It wasn’t inhabited by trolls.” Aradia shrugged, dismissing the topic. “But how about Eridan and Cronus? Where did they come from?”

“Oh, they were always here.” Feferi replied, completely unaware of the can of worms she’d unwittingly opened. “Orphaner and Dualscar were here before we were—and Eridan and Cronus were on them.”

“What?” Aradia asked, hands fluttering a little in front of her. “Wow, that’s—amazing! They must have diverged entirely from the rest of troll culture—how cool!”

_How insane_ , thought Sollux. That there had been violets who escaped the reign of the Empress was just plain unbelievable, though parts of it rang true—for one thing, there had been a mythical figure, an immensely powerful violet-blood of whom there was only ever one at a time called the Orphaner. Of course, the Orphaners had disappeared long, long ago—but Eridan and Cronus had been in Deadspace for a long, long time, hadn’t they?

Feferi and Aradia were still speaking animatedly, excited pointing and questions from each to the other. The question of Eridan had been forgotten for the moment in favor of discussing the ship, how the carvings had gotten there, et cetera—

“I have no idea.” Feferi admitted. “I assume there was someone here before we were—maybe Eridan or Cronus’ siblings, but ones who left before, but I assume they made them, but I’ve never asked.”

“You should.” Aradia urged. “These are incredibly detailed! I’d love to know who made them and how.”

“I’d love to tell you!” Feferi moved on down the row of carvings, pointing at different ones without explaining, until they reached a doorway. “Oh, here are the computer banks. If any of you want to contact your home ship or try to reach your home bases—”

“No chance of that.” Sollux interrupted. “We’re far enough away that there would be no point.”

“How sad.” She shrugged. “Well, anyhow, here’s the mess. If you’ll just check, you’ll see that it’s empty—but don’t let that stop you if you’re hungry! Eat there whenever you feel like it.”

“Oh, thanks.” Aradia took a few steps in, seemed to think of something, and turned back. “Do you mind if I talk to Sollux in private for a little?”

“Oh, go ahead.” Feferi flapped a hand at her. “I think I’m going to go have a chat with Meenah and Eridan right now. Sorry about how rude they were earlier.”

“It was no issue.” Aradia caught Sollux’ wrist and dragged him into the mess.

“What is it?” he asked, looking around. Could Orphaner synthesize coffee? Sollux would murder for a good cup of coffee.

“One of us needs to go back to Hellmurder Island and report.”

“Why?”

“Aside from getting the information they sent us out for…” Aradia stopped to consider what she said next. “They’re trolls. Sea trolls straddling the line between Caliborn’s Cloak and Calliope’s Veil, close to Oijera.”

“And?”

“They’re aquatic. They speak a whistle-click language that’s different from any language trolls speak.” Aradia glanced back at the hall where Feferi waited. “There are too many coincidences in this story.”

“You think?” Sollux raised an eyebrow. “AA, they’re sea-trolls. They were raised on their own for a long time away from troll culture. It isn’t strange that they’d have a different language. As to why they are where they are, it’s close to a bunch of habitable planets. They need to get food from somewhere, don’t they?”

“Still.” Aradia crossed her arms. “Grandfather and Grandmother Crocker were kidnapped and raised by sea-trolls, remember?”

“Oh.” A wave of trepidation swept over Sollux. Was Crocker one of the Calliopaean Houses who conducted honor killings? Caliborn’s light, they were fucked. They weren’t nearly as strong as they had been a century ago, but each of them had the physical strength of at least a teal-blood. “You think telling them will make them any more chill than hiding it?”

“I think hiding it will make them angry at _us._ ”

“So we throw them into the engines?” Sollux frowned. “That’s cracked.”

“You’re doing it.”

“What? Hell no. Your idea, your project.”

“Sollux!” Aradia snapped. “You and I are the two able members of this mission. Father Crocker will be expecting a report from one of us, and you know how they get about artificial intelligences!”

“What—no! Look, they uploaded Zhayd as an artificial intelligence. They have no problem with her! You just want to stay and stare at the artefacts, don’t you?”

“You just want to stay so you can stare at Feferi, don’t you?” Aradia parroted. “Don’t give me that shit. You are going to go before you do something stupid over here. I am going to stay here because _I have the expertise._ ”

“Screw your expertise.” Sollux crossed his arms. “It’d be better to have more people over here, wouldn’t it? Safer?”

“That’s why Damara and Mituna are staying with me, and you’re leaving.”

He glowered at her, relenting after a moment. She was right. Regretfully, he sighed. “Fine. I’ll head out in maybe a few hours.”

“Thank you.” Aradia said, obvious relief in her voice.

_Oh,_ he realized. Even if they’d broken up, Aradia pushing for it, and even though Aradia liked Feferi too, it couldn’t be easy seeing him getting a crush so quickly after they’d officially separated. It probably wasn’t her primary motivation for sending him away, but it couldn’t have hurt.

“We should tell Fef—them.” Sollux said, covering his slip hastily. Aradia said nothing, just turned to go back out into the hall.


	3. Leaf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry that it took such a while to get it up! Finals intervened :( But here this is!
> 
> EDITED 6/4/2017  
> I just noticed that I'd omitted something. While small and superficially not super important, it just makes an event at the beginning of the next chapter less abrupt. Sorry!

Feferi

 

“Do you really have to go?” Feferi asked. Oh, but she _liked_ them!

“It’s about time they went, if you ask me,” Eridan grumped. “C’mon, scram.”

Sollux shot Eridan a rude gesture. “We have to report back in. Since AA wants to stay to do some more work down here—and I have no problem with that—I’ll be going back alone, so she has the ship.”

“Do you _have_ a small ship?”

“Yeah. We brought my ship.” He flashed a quick smile, gone in a moment. Every smile of his looked effortful, like he was unused to it and each smile stretched muscles long-unused. “I’ll be fine. There’s just one thing I have to look at on my way back and then I’ll be gone. Out of your hair.”

“Be careful!” Feferi yanked him into a hug. “I want to see you again!”

“You’ll see me again,” Sollux said, sounding a little choked. Maybe she should ease off the stranglehold. “And I’ll keep in contact until I make it to Calliope. Yeah?”

“Fine by me.” Meenah and Eridan’s avatars said simultaneously. They high-fived with identical sharp-toothed grins.

“As long as you don’t talk to me, that is.” Eridan amended hastily. “I’d be fine with never seeing your ugly mug again.”

“Fuck you too.”

Feferi stuck her hands on her hips. “Eridan! Meenah! Don’t you dare! We _like_ them!”

“You like them.” Meenah kicked one ankle onto her knee and studied her garnet vambrances. “I couldn’t give less of a shit.”

Damara got a nasty look on her face, one that Feferi didn’t like, so she stepped between Sollux and Meenah. “You’d better get going, though! Didn’t you say you were worried you’d be late?”

“I did. Bye.” A little awkwardly, Sollux edged out of the room and towards the ladder to their ship.

The moment he was out of sight, Feferi whirled on Eridan and Meenah. “What was that?” she trilled. “I can’t believe you’d just—ugh!”

“Just what?” Eridan asked.

“Act like that!” Feferi fumed. “I mean, they’re so little—so short lived—what if that were the last time you ever saw him! Wouldn’t you feel sorry then?”

“No, not particularly.” Eridan faked a yawn. “Call me when something interesting happens, all right?”

“Fat chance!” she said. “You two can go be sour on your own!” Eridan’s avatar winked out of sight. Feferi growled at the air where he had been moments before.

“Actually, I’ll be goin’ off to Dualscar.” At Feferi’s incredulous glance, Meenah shrugged. “Gotta make sure Cronus doesn’t do anyfin stupid.”

“Okay!” Feferi snipped back, frustration blunted by the fact that Meenah had a good reason to skip. “Fine. I’ll call you if something happens.”

“Okay.” Meenah rolled her eyes. “Bye, then, fish.” She strolled out, bare feet making little slapping sounds on the floor.

Feferi threw her hands up in the air, though her ire was fading fast, and sat down at the bank of computers, cuing them to connect her to Sollux’ and Aradia’s ships. Their avatars blinked into existence in front of her, shifting shadows on their skin the only way she could tell they weren’t solid.

“Meenah’s going off to Dualscar, don’t you worry about her.” She told Aradia. “Do you want to follow her down to talk to Cronus?”

“Maybe I’ll wait a while.” Aradia demurred. “At least until Sollux gets back into Calliope safely.”

“Oh, good idea. You won’t escort him, though?”

“Nope. He can take care of himself. Can’t you, Sollux?”

“I can.” Sollux waved at Feferi. “But time-lag’s going to get worse as I go farther, so I’ll disconnect in maybe half an hour your time. I’ll send a message when I get back to safety. Sound good?”

“Good.” Feferi clasped her hands in front of her breastbone. “I’ll wait for that!” Her computer bleeped unhappily at her, startling her into a jump.

There was a splotch of pink on the screen, too far from Orphaner to be the Condescension, but too close to be something from Ouroburos Space. And Orphaner had deemed it a threat, labelled it pink, as it did any Reckoner artefact.

“Sollux?” she asked, heart speeding up. “Where are you going?”

“Huh? Back the way we came, checking on some kind of precursor artifact.” He paused. “FF, what’s wrong?”

He was approaching it, too close for comfort. “Sollux, I’d steer clear of that, if you could. Could you maybe veer off?”

“Why? I’m checking it out, not going that close.”

“I don’t know. I don’t recognize it, but Orphaner doesn’t like it.”

“Well, isn’t that great? You couldn’t have told me before?”

“I didn’t see it before!” she protested. “I just—get away from it Sollux, don’t go closer!”

“I ‘ll just go right past, then,” he snapped, clearly annoyed. “Check it later, you know.” The little yellow blip sped up, no longer heading directly towards the blotch.

Feferi frowned at her screen where Orphaner had now identified a thin ribbon of something rippling around the artefact. It wasn’t debris, but Orphaner was very insistent that there was something there. The refraction was strangely shattered, bright and shiny but there was something off—something Feferi recognized from somewhere. Something she…

“Sollux! Stop! Right now! Don’t—turn to the side or—go down or up or something!” Feferi leapt to her feet, eyes growing wide. “ _Move!_ ”

“Fef, what—”

His image shuddered and fell apart briefly, flickering chunks vanishing, pixelating, and Sollux swore.

“What was that? Fuck! A lot of stuff broke, it’s like I hit a brick wall, my mount—” his eyes widened, and he looked terrified, flinching every now and then as sparks of red and blue light played down his skinsuit. “My mount’s breaking.”

“Water vapor,” Feferi spat. “It was a Reckoner thing, it shot out water vapor—it _was_ hitting a brick wall, in terms of space. Probably some kind of gatekeeper thing. Turn around—go to Condescension, I’ll be right over there! We can fix the ship up there.”

“We can’t.” Aradia said. “If his mount is broken, the ship has next to no propulsion system. He’s dead in the water, as it were. His ship will start hemorrhaging cockpit fluid and gases soon, so we won’t be able to go down to recover him, so—he’s dead.”

Feferi pounded her fists on one of Orphaner's dry dashboards, narrowly restraining herself from spitting at the screen. "Aradia, you came back from dying!" She called into comms, hating how they were probably seeing her distress through the avatar.

Aradia's own avatar, a red-eyed throwback to her appearance when alive, bowed her head.

"Sollux hasn't been backed up in far too long. The risk that he would be too different and too inflexible wouldn't be taken. House Captor is notoriously risk-averse when working with copies of Housemembers."

Feferi stared at Sollux, tear-stained and furious. "There's nothing you can do?"

"Best to give up, Feferi." Sollux answered, voice starting to sound rough, croaky. "No way I can handle this mount much longer, and no way can any of you run in guns blazing." With a snort, he gestured to what was no doubt his viewscreen. “Not like there’s anything to fight, anyways.”

Feferi dropped her head to the metal of Orphaner's dash and keened long and high, ignoring Damara and Aradia's looks of pity.

"Fef."

She refused to turn around.

"Fef."

" _What do you want?"_ she demanded, whirling towards the gleaming glass of the tank wall. " _Eridan, leave me alone_!"

" _Fef, how's his connection?"_

She couldn't see him. Who knew what Eridan was thinking?

" _It's good! Why do you care?!"_

The rumble that came over the speakers was satisfied and low. _"Transfer it to Orphaner's main datacenter, not just drybanks._ "

What was he on about? " _Eridan, what are you doing_?"

" _Just trust me, Fef. I can do something."_

A frisson of fear ran down her spine.

Even as a hatchling, a wiggler, Eridan had shown the ability to be frighteningly focused. He was confident, genius, but it came at the cost of his ability to notice collateral, in video games as in real life.

Feferi scrubbed the heels of her hands against her face, ignoring Aradia and Damara's inquisitive stares. They knew she was talking to Eridan, but couldn't hear him. Par for the course.

" _It would be easier to trust you if I could see your face,"_ she tried.

Dead silence over the speakers.

 _"I'll transfer it."_ Feferi mumbled. " _If you can get him out of there."_

Eridan made a soft rumble-hiss sound only he and Cronus could attain. " _He'll get out of there, don't worr_ y."

The speakers cut out, and Feferi was left with Sollux's bloodied avatar and a bickering Aradia and Damara.

"What did Eridan want?" Aradia asked. Damara spat something in House Megido's language, too fast for Feferi to follow. She thought she'd caught something about Aradia's horns, though.

"I don't know. I think he wants to talk to Sollux."

"Why would he?" Sollux asked. "And why would he even care if I died?"

He had a valid point.

"I don't know," Feferi said in a small voice. "I don't really know him that well anymore. Even when we were moirailled, he kept secrets, and I haven't seen him since he molted."

"How could he help, anyways?" Aradia challenged.

"He's an amazing pilot. Maybe he thinks he can take over Sollux's ship and fly him to safety."

"As if," Sollux scoffed, which… true. Sollux was the best pilot Feferi could recall ever having seen. Eridan was good, but Sollux was light-years better.

Aradia paused, thoughtful. "Feferi, there are other computer systems on Orphaner?"

"One." She blinked up at Aradia's avatar. "It was refitted to have dry ones when Meenah and I started entering regularly."

"Why weren't they there before?" Aradia asked, not sounding particularly interested in the answer.

"Did I not tell you?" Feferi asked, startled. "Eridan and Cronus can't leave the water. They don't have lungs and their bodies can't handle the lack of water pressure. They can't even balance upright. I didn't realize until pupation because we were all like that until adult mount."

"That sucks." Sollux muttered. "Wait, what, I'm being hailed. Jackass isn’t even identifying himself-"

Feferi received a signal and accepted the hailing, opening the communications line between the two systems.

Sollux shrieked from the other end of his line. Feferi could hear Aradia’s similar reaction, but she was too busy scanning the new avatar.

It was maybe two and a half to three meters long from his nose to the tip of his tail, horned like a troll, and finned like Feferi. The similarities ended there; its body was entirely smooth and grey, skin on its back and sides blossoming out into multi-layered purple fins that twirled out in a diamond shape, like rays or skates, perpetually moving in tiny ripples. The eyes were large and violet, chest patterned with zigzagging gills, and long tail finned with tiny claws crowning each tine of the end fins. Massive feet that resembled long webbed hands from doll-thin ankles, a huge ribbed dorsal fin, animalistic teeth and black lips jutting forwards from the rest of its face which peeled back before it spoke. She knew that look, that construction…

"Sol, Fef, we don't have much time."

Feferi's mind filled in the blanks. "Eridan?"

"Who do I look like, bleedin' Cronus? Yeah. An' shut your mouth, Captor, you're gonna catch your death from this piss-water faster than the fuckers kin shoot you down."

"Holy shit." Sollux said. "Ho- oh my fucking god."

"I get it, I'm very attractive," Eridan said, raising an eyebrow. "Now, kin we get to work?"

Damara spat something in Megido.

"Yeah, 'fraid so, Dams." A flick of his legs and tail and he twirled around Sollux's avatar. "Now listen up. Sol, you got my connection?"

"Yeah." Sollux said, looking like he was choking.

"Good. Project your consciousness over it."

"What the fuck, no."

"Do it!" Eridan snarled, corneas flushing orange-red and fins snapping up around his face. The vibrating tines extended tiny claws. It was terribly intimidating, Feferi thought, to someone who didn't know that Eridan was terrified of cuttlefish.

Sollux shrieked and tapped rapidly at what was more than likely the keyboard in front of him. "How am I gonna know you're not gonna trap me or just leave my signal in Deadspace?"

Eridan shook his head, blinking his second eyelid rapidly. “I won’t. I’m not going to let data waste away, and Dams told me you’ve mapped Caliborn. Bring your trove.”

“What, like a bribe?” Sollux asked, working more frantically. “And you’re seriously going to get me the fuck out of here?”

“Yes. Hurry.” Eridan’s head jerked upwards to stare at Feferi.

She met his stare evenly. “A curator, Eridan?”

“Yeah, Fef.” He winced. “Sorry. I shoulda told you, I know.”

“Yes, you should have.” Feferi replied caustically. “I thought they’d all died out.”

“Sorry.” The image of his avatar dimmed slightly. A somatic language. It made sense. Transmissible in fluid, common to curators, even those whose bodies were too large to articulate intelligible sounds.

“You’re a little small for one your age, don’t you think?” she kicked her legs back, letting him know she wasn’t pleased.

“I’m not!” Eridan protested. “I’m three meters! Cronus hasn’t even molted!”

Her mood worsened. “Wonderful. Sollux, he means no harm. Especially if you have what Aradia says you do.”

“I do.” Sollux said, eyes darting back and forth between them.

“He’ll be fine, Fef.” Eridan reassured. “Uh, Sol—”

“Now be careful, Sollux. Curator minds are frightening places.” Feferi interrupted. “But Eridan won’t hurt you on purpose. His core programming forbids him from doing harm.”

Eridan made a strangled noise of—rage? Upset?—and his avatar disappeared from her cabin.

Sollux's image wavered.

"Feferi?" He asked.

"Sollux?"

"The ship's falling apart. I'm going to jump to Orphaner while I still can."

"When he's settled," Aradia interrupted, "I want you to explain what a 'Curator' is."

Sollux vanished entirely and her computer indicated he'd terminated their connection.

The lights on the tank flicked on and the speakers crackled to life, so Feferi turned her back to the tank and ignored him, switching all of the communication lines off. Let him stew in his own juices for a while. She wouldn't talk to Eridan until she had cooled down.

 

Sollux

 

Sollux stared with trepidation at the thing-- Eridan, for fuck's sake-- swirling about through the cockpit fluid. He never seemed to keep still, some part of him always in motion.

He could make the transfer at any time. Could jump to Orphaner's main computer system-- a biological one. Sollux had never had much truck with biological computers, and now he was regretting it. His lack of interest had led him to a moment of ignorance now, when he needed the reassurance of knowledge.

" _Hurry_." Eridan growled in the Captor tongue.

Sollux swallowed his fear and tapped out the necessary protocol.

The world wound around him, the taste of the cockpit fluid turning cold and sweet in his mouth and the pain of the needles in his goggles and the wires attached his skull and thighs and ankles and arms and wrists faded slowly. A sensation of icy breath ran over his body and then he was suddenly wrapped in warmth, paralyzing and swaddling warmth that made him want to reflexively leap backwards into his own body, despite the danger.

Something seized his links to his body and tore them savagely away from him in an instant, cutting him into an odd, trapped feeling, like he was wrapped in a web. Sollux realized blurrily that his body was gone, probably incinerated, and the net holding him was illusory, possibly a dream. He tried to move his legs but the net was tightly wound and his legs too stiff.

A soft breath of a chuckle echoed through the room, making his ears jump. "This how you visualize being' in a curator's trove?"

Sollux struggled and found himself suddenly hitting and then skittering over a floor, end over end until he lost his balance on hands and knees and his chin smacked into what felt like tile.

"Smooth." Eridan's voice said, and Sollux managed to lift his head and turn around on his belly, just enough to see Eridan seated cross-legged.

"You don't look like a fish thing anymore," slipped out of his lips and he cursed himself for having no filter.

The skin around Eridan's eyes tightened slightly and he smiled. "You imagined yourself trapped in my body as being tied up. This space is yours, Sol, you can do what you want with it. If I want to come in here I go through your perception filters and controls. You didn’t want my physical appearance to be true to the original. I wonder why."

Sollux ran his fingers over his throat, trying to control the yellowy blush that ran up his neck and over his cheeks. "Sorry."

"It's fine. No one likes a curator." Eridan's eyes were still far too large for any troll's to possibly be. Maybe something in his head had fixated on that, visualized it when he discarded the fins.

Sollux recalled that Cronus and Eridan were almost never in the same space together after they had pupated. Meenah had mentioned how relieved she was that she "Only ever had to deal with one Ampora at a time".

"Not even other curators?"

"Not even," Eridan confirmed. "Cro and I have never liked each other." He tugged at the black turtleneck sweater Sollux had apparently imagined him in, ear fins fluttering uncomfortably. "Ah, do you have any questions?"

"I don't know, are you still going to be a cagey patronizing dick if I ask any?" Sollux snapped.

Eridan winced. "No, sorry. You're in my body, you'll find stuff out eventually, it'll just be easier if I tell you in here."

"Okay." Sollux turned himself over into a cross-legged position and braced his hands on his knees. "What are you the curator of?"

Eridan blinked, fins stilling abruptly. "Why do you think I haveta be the curator of something?"

"Because the way Feferi and you are treating it, Curator sounds like it's a species name. Curator of a planet?"

"Curator of old things." Eridan corrected. "And knowledge."

"Anything to do with why you avoid Ouroburos Space?”

“Why do you ask?” Eridan questioned, tone far-too-innocent. His expression was mildly hostile, definitely dangerous.

“I might have heard that Feferi and Meenah thought it was dangerous. And that you told them it was.” Sollux replied, heart pounding. Trapped inside of Eridan as he was, he most decidedly could not escape if the Curator, for whatever reason, decided he didn't want to harbor Sollux's fugitive ass anymore.

“It is dangerous.” Eridan said guardedly. “Reckoner artefacts and weapons abound, armed. Going in there could trigger something we don’t want to see.”

Reckoner. He probably meant precursor. “You know they’re dangerous? Do you know how to disarm them or why? Have you studied them?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Sollux ground his teeth. “I thought you weren’t going to be a cagey patronizing dick. We have some that we study and one of them hurt Damara and Mituna. I just want to know why and how.”

Eridan's fins and expression flattened and neutralized. "Well, then. Yes we do. 'Smatter of fact, we have one here."

"In your head?" No way could Eridan carry precursor artefacts under his skin. They were way too large.

"No, in Orphaner," Eridan groaned. "Dad found it way back when, took him a few thousand years to envelop it. Still here."

"Dad?"

Eridan made a face. "Connect the dots, Captor."

"Orphaner? It's a ship-"

A ship with life sign readings, and what they were pretty sure was a heartbeat, and all-over signs of neural activity.

"—holy shit, are you going to get that big?"

Eridan raised an eyebrow. "Maybe in a few hundred thousand years."

"How old are you now?"

"Five, maybe six... Something like a quarter of a myr.”

"Really? You're younger than me? I've lived, what, seventy thousand years."

"And how many of those years were you time dilated in stasis?" Eridan asked.

"A lot of them," Sollux conceded.

"Young'un."

Sollux snorted, imagining an Eridan longer than planets, the size of star systems. "You have a terrible sense of humor." Whoops. He was trying to appease Eridan, not piss him off.

"Maybe I should probe you for information," Eridan mused. "Bury my hands in your synapses and read your memories..."

Sollux squealed, skittering away from Eridan. "Fuck no. If me being tied up was how I imagined being stuck inside your head, I don't wanna see how I visualize you 'probing' me."

Eridan shook with laughter, dropping his face into his hands. "You know, I was expecting that you would imagine it literally-- my hands in your skull, poking the motor cortex, hippocampus-- but you went straight to the gutter, didn't you?"

"Can you even have sex?" Sollux asked, and quailed back from Eridan's glare after a moment. "Sorry. That was private."

"Back in your ship, did it look like I had external genitalia?" Eridan's face flushed a blotchy violet. "No, I can't."

“Wait, Cronus is always making sexual suggestions and jokes. He can’t have sex though?”

“He thinks it’s cool.” Eridan rolled his eyes. “And he wants to be cool. ‘Cool’, to him, is not laying eggs from an internal crèche with genes from people he’s studied. Like Dad did. Like I eventually will, with a gene pool I’ve memorized.”

"Of which I am now a part. Congrats, you're having Captor grubs."

Eridan dropped his face into his hands. "God, no. I'll drown them if they're born with your stupid horns or psionics."

"Oh wait, they're aquatic." At Eridan's disgruntled sneer, Sollux snorted. "I can do this all day, fishdick. And the House of Gold is a perfectly good house."

Eridan let out a long, strangled groan. "How did we get onto this topic? No, let's go back to talking about the Reckoners, not our future potential spawn."

"Cheer up. If I'm still alive by then, I can help you raise them."

Eridan raised his eyes to the vacant white ceiling of the room Sollux had imagined them into. "So. The Reckoners."

"Yeah, what did you mean the Orphaner 'enveloped' one of them?"

Eridan made a tiny sound of frustration. "To explain that, we have to go for a walk."

"You're already moving around," Sollux pointed out, not sure how he'd known that.

Eridan's fin twitched. "I am. And you're already getting used to being a passenger." Clearing his throat, he stood rapidly and held out a hand to Sollux. "Hold on. Curator heads are mazes."

Taking it, Sollux followed him across the room, curious.

"Even though you didn't ask, I'm going to explain to you the Reckoners." Sollux must have telegraphed boredom, because he snorted. "Oh, get over yourself. One time in the life of a curator we're allowed to show off."

"Fine." Sollux groaned with exaggerated resignation. Actually curious, he listened closely as Eridan started talking.

"We call them the Reckoners, but they called themselves the Cherubim." Eridan waved a door open and led them into a corridor lined with writhing snakes. Sollux gripped Eridan's hand tightly, terrified.

"You don't like snakes?" Eridan asked.

"Fuck no."

"Deal with it, because the Cherubim were snakes." He cleared his throat. "Cherubs came in essentially two branches-- green and red. Each one was born with the potential to be either. Red were by nature destructive and furious and hateful, green healing and loving and beloved. Most red cherubim were chased out of Reckoner cities and towns or imprisoned, because it was inevitable that they would one day attempt to kill green cherubim."

A sudden chill ran down Sollux's spine despite Eridan's theatrical flourishes. "Greenshifters and redshifters."

Eridan shot him a curious look. "Sure. The curators already lived at that time outside of the two galaxies they lived in. We called those galaxies-"

"Ouroburos space."

"Will you stop fuckin interrupting? Yeah, we did. So. Cherub government was a monarchy, and the king and queen had two kids- twins. Hatched from the same egg. Which was impossible. No one knows how it happened, but it did. Named Caliborn and Calliope, they-"

"Caliborn was a red cherub, Calliope was a green."

"Fuckin fine! Tell the story how you want to!" Eridan threw his arms up, still holding Sollux's hand.

"Sorry. No, keep telling it."

"Okay." Eridan bristled a moment longer. "Normally, the fight between green and red sort of- dulls the color. They're not completely good, or completely bad. But being born separate from their potential red or green self, there was nothing like that. Calliope was raised in the palace, subject to isolation out of fear of... Something. Not sure what it was. Caliborn was ejected to the second Galaxy, populated entirely by redshifted cherubs. He fought down and took control of a powerful gang of them and they called themselves the Felt.

"Calliope eventually razed the tower where she had been kept, and found a species of aliens living in the green Galaxy she called the Carapacians."

"Creative. I bet they had shells."

"Shut your mouth, Captor. They did. She found out that they'd had a war and a rebellion a while back and their kings and one of their queens was dead. The other queen was a member of The Felt. She persuaded four of them, the Midnight Crew, to aid her in killing her brother. They helped, and in the end destroyed The Felt entirely, although their leader Spades Slick died fighting the Black Queen, Sn0wman."

"Did you just pronounce a number in a name?"

"Perks of chatting while being in a curator's thinkpan, Sol, you can pronounce numbers and symbols while maintaining the integrity of the word. Now shut up. Calliope and Caliborn began a battle, huge and spanning' the entire galaxy. All of the cherubs joined in, but Calliope and Caliborn were too strong and in the end, it was just those two against each other. Who do you think won?"

"I think there's a sister of the House of Spiders who you'll like."

"Ha ha. No, Sol, probably not. I don't like sentient quicklife."      

"Except Feferi and me?"

"Pushing' your luck, Sol. But I guess you're not too boring. Don't get distracted. Neither of them won in the sense that both of 'em died. But Caliborn left weapons scattered everywhere. Turnover's quick-"

"Turnover?"

"When a civilization collapses into extinction. Turnover's quick, but the weapons made it quicker; made it easier to kill themselves, start wars, destroy planets. One of Caliborn's most potent weapons was an Orb."

He took a quick turn, tugging Sollux around a corner and through a door. Sollux hopped his way through a thick layer of viscous fluid. The corridor was strewn with pulsing, ropy cables which dripped the fluid.

"This's gross, ED."

"The thinkpan of a curator."

"Fine."

"The Orb influenced thousands of civilizations in their rise and fall and twisted their origins to make them more savage and violent. Fortunately, it could only reach half of Ouroburos space. Caliborn's redshifted galaxy. As far as we’re aware."

"Did it-"

"Yes. It hit Alternian society. Only the first to third batches of Houses, though. After the third batch, Orphaner finished enveloping the Orb and hauled ass and it stopped affecting the course of your society. Again, as far as we’re aware."

"I was second." Sollux muttered, coughing in the acrid fumes rising from the flooded floor.

"Yeah. Knew the moment I saw you and 'Radia. Could feel its eyes on me." Eridan started down a flight of stairs, a waterfall of the faintly lavender fluid sluicing past his bare feet. "Orphaner has it, and is keeping Ouroburos safe from it."

"What is it? Where?" The fluid had risen to mid-thigh, and Sollux was squirming at the feeling of thicker or faster currents racing around his skin. He wasn't wearing his waterproof House Captor space suit, only the jeans and tee shirt that were his casual wear, and the fluid was uncomfortable, prickling his skin.

Eridan took a few steps down into the fluid. Sollux resisted, leaning forward awkwardly as Eridan's death grip carried him along. "Come on, Sol."

"Um, no." Sollux squinted into the murk, where he could see that the liquid came up to Eridan's waist. He could feel that Eridan's hands were clammy and webbed now. His breath came faster, the instinctive fear of water every troll was born with getting the better of him.

"Sol, come on." His eyes were luminescent.

"I don't have gills," Sollux tried.

"Come on."

"I can't swim."

"That's a big fat lie, Sol. Come on."

"No." Sollux dug his heels into the step, planting them against one of the cables.

"Sol, come on into the water. It won't drown you."

"This isn't water."

Eridan snorted. "Just keep following."

Against his better judgement, he took a step down. The fluid ran up to his hips and Eridan grimaced when Sollux tripped into his shoulder.

"Come on," he said and kept walking. Sollux followed delicately, feeling the stuff rise to his armpits, over his shoulders and his and Eridan's clasped hands. Just before it covered his mouth and eyes, he took a huge breath.

The moment Sollux's head was submerged, his horn tips falling under, Eridan socked Sollux in the stomach. Coughing, he reflexively took a breath and opened his eyes.

Eridan was nowhere to be found. Nothing was holding his hand. He wasn't standing, he was--

"Sol, chill, you're raising our heartbeat." Eridan's voice echoed through their head.

"I'm in your body." Sollux tried to say, and found that he couldn't.

"Yeah." Sollux felt his body contort impossibly and dive through the warm translucent violet fluid. His fins rippled, propelling him.

"You didn't have anything else?"

"Oh, let me see if Orphaner has a spare crèche anywhere. One with brain-dead teenage curators. Yeah, I'll find something with that description right quick."

Sollux watched as they swam through a network of branching tunnels. Something about the shape looked familiar.

"Are we in Orphaner's circulatory system?"

"Yeah. Roadway of the ship."

The rhythmic pounding pulsations of the tunnels made sense. Somewhere ahead he could see a door squeezing shut and flying violently open.

"How many chambers do your hearts have?"

"Eleven." They slipped into the atrium and then into a ventricle, but Eridan didn't go onwards. He turned to the wall of the ventricle and dug at it, opening a valve and squeezing through.

The moment their tail cleared the ventricle, Eridan was moving again through a spongy cavelike network. "Chest cavity," was all he said by way of explanation. The passages led to a massive room maybe fifty kilometers in diameter, nearly all of it taken up by a white sphere.

"I thought you said the Orb was Caliborn's." Sollux breathed.

"You mean the green? We're still not sure what that's about, to be honest. It's pretty vicious, though."

Sollux's stomach crawled. The blank, featureless orb still seemed to stare at them, and more than that there was a clear sensation that it recognized his presence. It was not a pleasant sort of recognition; the green light exuding from its surface felt keenly malevolent.

"What do you call it?"

"It calls itself Doctor Scratch."

 

Aradia

 

Aradia let Feferi collapse in the comfy chair in Forbidden Tantalus. She sat down delicately across from her, waiting patiently. Not for the first time, she regretted that Equius hadn’t considered facial muscles necessary. Expressions made communication of sympathy so much easier.

Damara flopped down next to Feferi and muttered under her breath, inaudible even to Aradia’s ears.

“Curators.” Feferi said abruptly. “Curators.”

“What are they?” Aradia probed delicately. “I understand that Eridan is one of them, but…”

“I don’t know much. I can only be so helpful.” Feferi flicked her fins back. “All right.”

“Yes?”

“Curators are an artificial species. We’re pretty sure, anyways. Eridan and Cronus were always very evasive. I guess now we know why.” Feferi fidgeted uncomfortably. “They were made to record the universe and its progression—for who or what, I don’t know, but that’s how Eridan explained it. He said they died out a long time ago. Well, that was a lie. They’re aquatic from birth and pupate into their adult forms and then never stop growing.”

“Never?” Aradia asked. That was impossible. At what rate? They’d outgrow any planet’s—

“Never.” Feferi jumped suddenly. “Oh, Mother, Orphaner’s a curator. An adult curator. Eridan always called it ‘dad’ but I never thought—I never thought he was being literal.”

Oh, okay.

_No, that was not okay._

“How he alive?” Damara asked, looking appalled. “How he breathe? Eat?”

“Eridan and Cronus constantly bring space debris and water into the ship. They said it was for fuel, but now I’m guessing it’s to incorporate matter. There’s dissolved oxygen in water, and he probably—he probably grew the stone shell over his body. Infinity, I never thought of that. Not once. Why didn’t I?” Feferi gave a shaky breath.

Aradia closed her eyes briefly. That did explain a lot. Eridan’s dislike of being seen, Orphaner’s over-the-top tissue implants, even more convoluted than Condescension’s—Orphaner wasn’t a ship, it was a living being.

“So that’s where Eridan lives?” she realized. “In Orphaner’s—what, his interstitial space? Chest cavity? Blood vessels? _Lymph_ vessels? How big even are his cells?”

“Veins, probably. But the chest cavity would be where the dry spaces are, especially since he doesn’t have lungs. Eridan was stunted—probably didn’t look like it, but he’s old enough that he should be maybe twice as long. My bet is that Orphaner is slowing his growth, which means that he thinks Eridan should be on par with quicklife for as long as possible. Which worries me. Curators are notoriously good at predicting cataclysms.”

Aradia thought a moment, until her ship’s communication systems interrupted her. “Meenah’s requesting permission to board, Feferi. I’m letting her on.”

Feferi nodded quietly, clenching her hands into fists in her lap. “Thank you.”

They sat awkwardly in silence until Meenah burst in like a hurricane and pulled Feferi to her feet. “Did you see him?”

“Yeah.” Feferi glanced down. “I don’t know what to think.”

Meenah sighed and sat down on Feferi’s other side, hugging her with one arm. “Right. Anybody want to talk about it?”

“I would like to know more about the Curators.” Aradia said delicately. Had she a face, she would be frowning. “Meenah, do you know anything?”

Meenah’s face contorted into an expression of discomfort. Her fuchsia eyes, the same color as the stones studding her bracelets and the small golden crimps on her braids, narrowed. “What’s already been said?”

“The Curators grow, essentially, forever. They don’t stop. Young curators live in their parents’ bloodstreams—or lymph vessels—and Orphaner, Cronus, and Eridan are all Curators. They’re essentially robots built to record history and live forever.” She counted off. “Oh, and Orphaner is slowing down Eridan’s development.”

“That’d be why Cronus lives on Dualscar.” Meenah grimaced. “Orphaner has the tyranny of biology over them while they live in him—so Cronus left before Orphaner could trigger his mount. Eridan stayed, and Orphaner’s got his coils in him.” She blew out a long breath. “They can live forever in adult form, but not so much in kiddie mount. So I’d say Cronus is somewhere from ten to two hundred years from death. They’re not just record-keepers, they’re supercomputers.”

“Like Aradia?” Damara interjected, looking skeptical.

“Not so much, fish.” Meenah shook a hand out. “You’re on the right track, though, Rustie. Biological computer, like Aradia’s, but it runs through his whole body. If you’re careful ‘nough with the glial cells, you could—theoretically—keep a sort of ‘brain’ in the whole body, like grasshoppers. We sorta have it? Like how if you cut your arm off, it keeps moving. The head-brain ain’t there, but the body-brains still are.”

“So the curators don’t just have nerves, but a network of cognitive neural mass through their entire body.” Aradia leaned back against the couch. “They must be energy-consuming machines. Eustatia, Orphaner’s blood must be near boiling.”

“Their metabolism is slow. All I can tell you is that they’ve got pretty…” Meenah bit her lower lip. “Super-duper efficient cells and little machinery in their bloodstream. And slower metabolism to compensate. I think Orphaner said something one time about actually using natural atomic fission? Something about that.”

“They were built to last.” Aradia said quietly. “Forever, and to never get involved, like Eridan has. Or Orphaner! He raised you. Why?”

“Ionno.” Meenah shook her head. “Every time we ask, he clams up. Can’t get it outta him, by hook or by crook. Just says the same weird shit about grubs in a planet-ship, no sign of a lusus, and he wanted to take care of us.”

Aradia thought back, back, back. She couldn’t remember anything. The only aquatic trolls she’d ever heard of had violet blood—and they didn’t have a House to represent them. Meenah and Feferi, fuchsia-blooded and water-breathing. No mother grub, no nothing… no such thing as a fuchsia lusus, no records of fuchsia blood. Megido was one of the youngest Houses, Eustatia having come a full two centuries after the ascension of Houses Maryam, Nitram, Vantas, and Serket, with Captor and Leijon not far behind—about the only ones Megido could clam seniority over were Makara.

Maybe she could ask one of the older Houses for help. But they’d demand involvement—and Eustatia, the Crockers wouldn’t like that.

“We’re in a bit of a bind, then.” Aradia remarked lightly. “We can’t exactly go to Captor and tell them this. The mission was confined to us alone.”

“Just tell ‘em.” Meenah raised a garnet-studded eyebrow. “What does that have to do with the price of corn?”

“Politics.” Damara provided. “Shitty fuckers.” She added, summing up the situation rather succinctly.

“That’s stupid.” Meenah’s brow furrowed. “Fish, are you telling me that because someone else kept a secret once you have to keep it forever?”

“You tell them. Stupid.” Damara dared. “Call them. Say them that died Sollux.”

It would be death by a thousand cuts, Aradia thought wearily. Crocker had known what they were doing, asking Aradia, Damara, Sollux, and Mituna to do this mission. They—or perhaps Father Crocker alone—had chosen three individuals whose Houses could easily throw away on basis of possible treason, and one trustworthy one—one who was now dead. It was the perfect incentive for loyalty, particularly if there was something about the fuchsia-blooded sea trolls that commoner House members didn’t know, something senior House members wouldn’t like talked about.

Reviewing her friends, Aradia pondered. Most of the Calliopaean Houses were standoffish. If Aradia, Damara, and Mituna tried to speak with them, they would be reported back to the Reunion Council.

Perhaps she could speak to her ‘sisters’ from when she roleplayed. But Vriska now loathed her and Terezi was honor-bound to her House in ways she couldn’t supersede. Equius would tell anyone who asked him who was above his own rank. Nepeta, perhaps. But she would tell Equius, and back to square one. Tavros? But no.

How supremely frustrating. Damara was arguing with Meenah when Aradia tuned back in.

“Can you believe her?” Meenah asked Feferi, no tact, no nothing. “This fish says—”

“We should go back to Calliope.” Aradia interrupted them. “Crocker did their research. We can only try to contact them. There really is no one else.”

Feferi seemed to shrink slightly. “So you can’t bring Sollux back?”

Aradia held up her hands helplessly. “Captor is ridiculous. Unless we can somehow manage to coerce their entire branch to manufacture a replacement, there’s no way. We could illegally build a robot form, but he’d be deactivated and sold for scrap the moment Captor learned of it.”

Damara kicked a foot up onto her knee gloomily. “She right.”

Yes, Damara would know. Meenah fiddled with her golden bracelets.

“I’m gonna talk to Eridan.” She said. Feferi stiffened, and Meenah rushed to reassure her. “Not you, me. You can’t handle it right now. Leave it alllll to me.”

 Feferi shrugged, trying hard to seem unaffected. Aradia cleared her throat to catch their attention.

“Feferi?”

“Yes?”

“Do you mind—maybe finishing your explanation of the works on the walls of the cavern? Even if I have to go back soon, I’d like to return with that much at least.”

“Oh! I can do that. I can.”

“I go to Mituna.” Damara stood. “Sollux dead. He not doing well.”

“Yes.” Aradia said. “See if there’s anything you can do. I’ll be down shortly.”

Damara stood and Meenah left moments later, boots clunking after Damara’s softer footsteps.

“Where were you?” Aradia asked delicately. “The earliest of the carvings?”

“Yes, those oldest ones—those are some of the oldest stories Orphaner knows. I thought it was only a fairy tale at first, but now I’m not certain.”

“Go ahead.”

“”I—it started a long time ago.” Feferi’s fingers fiddled in her lap. Her brow wrinkled and her mouth twisted into a puzzled moue. “The story goes that there was a war, a long time ago—that’s the start of it all. A war for dominance, started by the Lord Crimson, Caliborn.”

 

Jade

 

Jade unclipped the pouch from Jake's IV, attaching another one quickly. He'd bettered much, although emotionally he was fragile; he'd hyperventilated and passed out when Jane returned and berated him. And kept panicking, in a constant state of distress, so out of worry Jade was giving him extra fluids and a mild relaxant. She hoped it kept him at least semi lucid.

John was napping in the chair next to Jake's bed, chin fallen onto the breast of their pressed blue skinsuit. They had Jake's hand clenched in theirs.

Jake looked terrible. It was emotionally exhausting, caring for him; she never knew if he was going to suffer or hurt himself again today or tomorrow. She hated it. Jade desperately wanted to be able to wave a magic wand and fix him, but when she told Jake that during his lucid moments he only smiled wanly and would tell her, "I'm fine, Jade! No magic needed. Is the spacey thing giving you witchy powers?" Or something corny and stupid and unconvincing like that.

But with him lying in the bed again, all of her old doubts returned again. His cheeks were sunken, eyes shadowed in dark bags that belied his lack of sleep. Even now that he was sleeping-

Except he wasn't. Jade jumped when his glasses locked onto her, darting about feverishly. "Get them out," he croaked, startling John into wakefulness. "Get them out!"

John plucked the glasses off of Jake's face, panicking and alternating between trying to embrace Jake and giving him space.

"No!" Jake cried. "No, no, no!"

John gave in to their initial impulse and wrapped Jake in a bear hug, pinning him to the mattress as he started to thrash, tangling his legs in the sheets. Jade hurried around to his other side, pushing his wrists down from there and helping John keep him still.

John whined loudly, squeezing Jake more tightly, and Jade held her tongue about John's strength and broken ribs when she saw Jake biting at John's shoulder wildly, wailing and gnawing.

"The eye!" Jake screamed, spraying bloody saliva over John’s suit. "My eye!"

And he settled, suddenly, relaxing under her hands. She breathed a sigh of relief, hesitated a moment to make sure Jake wouldn't start again, and ran to the counter to get a first aid kit. John picked themself up off of Jake and peeled the suit back from their shoulder, whimpering as they wiped the blood off with messy fingers. Jade angrily smeared a thimbleful of aspic-of-machines over the bites, watching as it swirled and repaired the broken flesh, sucking up the blood. John smiled gratefully.

"The staff." Jake said. Both of them jumped.

The computer registered him as being asleep, but his brain activity was high enough that it was confused.

"Yes, it was I." He continued, sounding faintly amused. "It was easy enough, what with them approaching the Staff of Caliborn."

Jade carefully approached, wiping her hand over his forehead and using a cloth to carefully clean his teeth and lips and check for damage. He was fine.

"What a pity."

John sat down again, watching Jake in his strange semi-sleep with a crushed expression.

"Don't think unkindly of me." Jake continued, sounding so unlike himself that Jade wanted to slap him awake. It wouldn't work. She knew from experience.

"It's only my duty. I'm not bad, just drawn that way." He chuckled.

Grabbing John's collar, she hauled them to their feet and led the way out of the room, setting the computers to watch and record and intervene if needed.

Also from experience, Jade knew Jake wouldn't have another fit. He'd just continue speaking nonsense to no one until he lapsed silent again and fell into oblivious madness.

As she left, she could hear Jake talking. "Why, no. But I will tell you; Calliope's wand is still out there."

Jade slammed the door and stormed off, John following at a distance.

Terezi1769

Terezi was at loose ends.

With Karkat and Sollux off somewhere, Karkat on some trip to an edge system of Caliborn, Sollux on his mission with his batch-brother and Megido, Nepeta with Meulin and Clauri administrating some kind of social work somewhere, Vriska... she didn’t want to think about Vriska, but with her gone she was left with just no options.

Her computer pinged, drawing her attention to an incoming call. She flicked to it, frowning briefly at the shade of blue before brightening.

Oh, John! She always felt better after messing with John. Terezi accepted the call with delight.

John’s avatar—grayscale, all the better to bother her with—appeared. “Rezi!” John exclaimed. “Good seeing you again. How are you?”

“I’m doing well!” she smiled widely, letting her gums show. John snorted loudly.

“No missions? You’re all alone on GC.”

“No. Pyrope’s just hanging out.” Terezi slung her legs over the cockpit seat’s arm and draped herself near upside-down. “I’m _bored,_ John. Can’t you come to Reunion? Just a few days?”

John groaned and leaned forward, letting colors bleed back into the avatar. “I can’t, ‘Rezi. I really wish I could! But I can’t.”

Abruptly, Terezi became aware of the body language that John didn’t know about and so couldn’t erase.

John had always been shit at acting okay when they weren’t. Today was worse than usual. Their spine was rigid, hands moving restlessly over the chair arms—audibly, no less. John’s goggles were hanging around their neck, said her computer. So John knew that they were agitated. And they didn’t want her to know.

“Realllyyy?” Terezi reached out her hands, flashing claws. She heard John shift—she hoped she hadn’t made them uncomfortable, but she was—Nah. Wouldn’t focus on that, bad direction to think on with John. “I think we’d have fun. Could mess with people.”

John made a plaintive whine. “I want to! Come on, ‘Rezi, I can’t change anything!”

“Just run away for a while!” she pushed herself up on her hands, trying hard not to let her concern show. “I think the Maryams are coming in soon. We could tease Kanaya about the Lalonde girl!”

“Rose,” John corrected automatically. “And that’s rude! Nooo, don’t make me want to go! I can’t!”

“Why’d you call me, then?” Terezi challenged. “You want a fight?”

“I called ‘cause I—because I—” they broke off. “I don’t know!”

She had it. John called her because they didn’t have any other relationships and because they were tense and all wrought up. Ugh. John should call just to have a fight more often.

“I want a fight.” Terezi pushed herself back into a sitting position. “You and me, _[hand and hand]._ Run the gauntlet. Maybe do something more entertaining than sit around!”

John twitched and she heard them moving around in their seat more. The blur of color that was the avatar told her very little about what he was doing, but imagination provided visions of their movements. And John’s ass. They had a nice ass. She remembered last time they’d been—no.

Terezi was maybe more contact-starved than she’d thought.

“I wanna.” John muttered, voice dropping into a lower register. “I really wanna.” They sounded troubled enough that Terezi dropped her exaggerated expression.

“Really? A real fight?”

That in and of itself was discomfiting. John didn’t like the more physical aspects of their relationship like she did, avoiding full fights and the sexual motions that inevitably followed them. She’d been pointedly avoiding such insinuations and propositions because they made them uncomfortable, but here John was _initiating_ them. They didn’t feel sexually towards her, which she knew, and was indifferent towards their fights, and never ever asked for a fight outright unless it was one of her bad days.

Sometimes John made Sollux jealous. Terezi knew that they’d only ever been pale for each other briefly, though. Back when she was in that rough patch with Makara, back when her pitch quadrant was still full.

“Yeah.” John voice was muffled. She assumed they’d buried their face in their hands. “I wanna be there.”

Terezi wanted a fight. She wanted to fight John like nobody’s business, shove them into a wall and bite at the shoulder hard enough to bruise and gentle enough that John’d scoff and pull her head around to kiss them. She wanted to end up with her arms around their chest and face in the bruised meat of their shoulder shoulder, John sprinkling kisses and soft bites along her breast and collar-bone, those long-fingered hands in her hair or on her back or both, the smell of their sweat tangling together in the air to make it rich and thick. It was so rare that John wanted something like that, but.

“Is everything okay?” she asked softly, dropping the grating tone that she normally used with them. She was a _responsible quadrant-mate._

“I don’t know.” John replied, almost a whisper. “I really don’t know. Can you—can you drop by Hellmurder next time you’re around? I need a fight. Or something.”

Terezi considered. It was beyond worth dealing with John’s stress being taken out on her to have a fight.

“I will. Don’t know if I’ll be around for a long time, though.” She hoped they could sense her regret. “Reunion’s taking forever.”

John sighed and reclined against the seat. “I wanna be there,” they repeated, voice tight. “I wanna be there.”

Terezi scrambled for something to say. “I want to see you too.”

She heard John open their mouth, hesitate, and stop themselves. “I did have a reason for calling.” John said thickly, like they were fighting for each word. “I wanted to ask about the Colamér repair efforts. How’s the… uh, the trench recovery?”

“It’s going well.” Terezi passed to the work files she had open on her desktop. “The Colamér recovery is… difficult, though, particularly in the trench. That’s where Harley crashed, you know.”

John moved around more, fingers restarting their drumming on the chair. “So the lab looks beyond recovery?”

“Just about.” She scanned one of the reports. “The biggest loss is the one they brought in a week before Harley busted the place. It’s just gone.”

“Did they ever figure out what it was?” John asked.

“No. Well, they might have. But we have no idea now. The lab’s just gone.” Terezi looked up, sniffing at the image. “Nothing but rubble.”

“That’s crap luck.”

“Not luck. I think Harley meant to do it. He didn’t like what they were doing with the artefacts.”

John inhaled slowly and let the breath out on an even count of fifteen. “’Rezi, why would he blow up a planet for that? If it was just the lab, why’d he kill the world?”

“I’m not sure.” Screwing up her mouth, Terezi flipped through the tests that had come through the moment the community had heard of the event. “It wasn’t just the ship’s crash and the explosion, yeah. He had a payload of stuff that wouldn’t explode, and he was smart. He wouldn’t do that just because. He wanted everyone on that planet dead.”

John let out a soft groan. “Infinity, why?”

They were distressed, too distressed, Terezi thought.

Wait. Oh. _Oh._

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” she agreed. She wouldn’t lie just to smooth over John’s feelings—not only would it upset John in a way she didn’t like, but it was just plain awful to give them false hope. “The clean-up efforts for the water will take centuries. I don’t know if the cavern systems or cliffs will ever recover—their native flora is just gone.”

They made a tiny noise of unhappiness. “Everything’ll be gone?”

“Megido is doing their best to excavate the caverns on the side. If you got the guts, you could dive down with them.”

“I don’t know if I can dive that deep anymore.”

“If you’re in Caliborn in a ship-year or so, you could stop at Chariclo.” Terezi suggested. “We could test how deep you can dive still. I bet I can beat the stuffing out of you in a diving competition, you wimp.” She could imagine John’s expression, their startled half-smile with their lips slightly parted.

They hadn’t gone swimming together in a while. That might convince John to come over.

“Are you kidding me? You couldn’t dive your way out of a surface cordon.” John snorted.

“I can still out-dive you, you little baby. Can you even get more than ten centimeters under the water?”

“Of course I can! Rude.”

“Fight me.”

“Oh, I’ll fight you. And I’ll win! You’re a total loser!”

“I’ll bring Karkat and Sollux along. They’ll enjoy the lack of challenge.”

“Sollux? Karkat? Pshht. Those two are weenies. They have no chance.”

“How dare you slander my moirail’s name! I challenge you to righteous combat! You, blue raspberry child, are the largest of weenies. And I shall prove it!”

“I challenged you first!”

“Oh? Does the defendant challenge the prosecution? I charge you with contempt!”

“No! Don’t do your weird role play thing with me! Do that with Dave! Or some one who cares!”

“What is that the defendant says? Do they refuse to take part in the trial? The defendant shall be fed to His Honorable Tyranny!”

“No. I’m not getting sucked into this again.”

“The prosecution raises her cane. She has won again.” Terezi cackled. “The witnesses are silent. They know there is no hope left for the defendant! Not that there ever was any.”

“Ugh!! The prosecution is a huge weirdo! And she’s not going to win!”

Terezi shrieked with victory and hammered her hands on the console in front of her. “She has won again! The defendant shall now be fed to the Tyranny!” She’d gotten John to roleplay with her! She’d gotten John to respond to the roleplay!

John made an inarticulate sound of frustration. “You’re so a _nnoying!_ Stop that!”

“But how can the prosecution stop something that the defendant themselves engaged in? A flaw in your reasoning!”

“That doesn’t even make any sense!”

Terezi threw her head back and cackled, lips peeled back from her teeth in a huge grin. She could hear John breathing heavily over the line before they started to laugh, a put-upon sarcastic sort of laugh that made her grin all the harder.

“You are so fucking weird.” John said when they’d caught their breath, tone oddly choked. “I’m going now before you get any weirder.”

“Hate you too.” She said in the most saccharine tone of voice she could manage. “Stop by some time!”

“As if.” John’s end of the line rustled a little. “I. Hate you too, ‘Rezi. I hope you accidentally eat something. Colored wrong. Bye.”

The connection cut and Terezi leaned back in her chair, feeling reinvigorated and buzzing with pleased hormones and the heady high of hatred.

Infinity above, she loved screwing with John.

 

Aradia

 

So this was what Aradia had to show for her mission: one team member dead, his memories and personality possibly trapped in the body of a member of a species which was an unknown quantity; two, three or four potential (tenuous) allies; and a fairy-tale regarding the Priors that seemed to be true, if Sollux's mangled ship and incinerated body were anything to go by.

She groaned, letting her forehead fall into her hands with a clink. If she was lucky, Pollux or Gemnys would travel out to Orphaner with no ulterior motives and transplant Sollux into a ready-made body. Worst-case scenario, she would be benched as the rest of the Houses flew out to blast Condescension, Orphaner, and Dualscar into ash.

All of which had contributed to her decision to go to Hellmurder Island.

She'd never been, but everyone knew Crocker's reputation; ruthless, efficient, compassionate, goofy, and reliable. They had ins with Houses Serket, Lalonde, and Vantas which would prove invaluable. House Maryam could probably also be coaxed into helping. And she'd heard rumors of a budding kismesitude between House Crocker's youngest and Terezi Pyrope, which would oblige her to aid in any efforts.

Father Crocker would demand involvement as the one who'd originally planned the mission. She hoped.

The door to the bridge slid open. Aradia raised her head.

Damara fidgeted at the entryway. Aradia sighed.

_“Please come on in, sister.”_

_“Thank you.”_ She skittered in and sank onto the couch. _“Aradia, I talk to you about… about the mission. And about the one that hurt us.”_

 _“What?”_ Aradia frowned. What had happened was public record, wasn’t it?

 _“The artefact that hurt us not alone. There were several. But you know that.”_ Damara frowned. _“The one next to it the one hurt Crocker. And that why we there. The…”_ she swallowed. _“The Reunion Council want to know what done that. So we went.”_

Aradia had expected something like that. _“Did you learn why?”_

 _“I do no know. We in it when what happened.”_ She shivered. _“No one know that.”_

No, it wasn’t. _“In the artefact? There was an accessible interior?”_

_“It full of halls. Mituna and I decide to go in it. We curious. It not the one we look for, but it bigger and we think other might protecting it.”_

_“So you went in. And it hurt you?”_

Damara looked miserable. _“We not notice first. Aradia, was… I not remember. But was light. Bright light, like heart of Calliope, and we… we hear sound. Cold sound.”_

Aradia folded her hands in her lap. _“That was what hurt you? The light?”_

 _“I… not know. We decide leave—I not recall why—return to ship. Realize something wrong there. We try contact the… councilors, but I not remember what language I was speak and not speak right and Mituna not speak or think right too.”_ Damara shifted uncomfortably. _“They thought was a prank. Ignored us until we back and try to tell what happen. Were angry we left before we finish mission. And they saw Mituna not walk right or talk, and I not know what they say half of time.”_

_“So then they checked up on you.”_

_“Yes. Problem not… not very big. I think we able to back to work as before, maybe trouble in communicate or… other thing. But they tell us we not go back to Ten Thousand Reunion.”_

_“What?”_

_“Scanned our implants and get terrible look on face, and tell us we could no go to Reunion any more. That we… uh… dirty the pool.”_

Aradia checked, rapidly, the sharing status of Damara’s strand. She wasn’t one who attempted to mesh strands with others frequently, but it was still a shock to see that Damara’s strand was restricted access on pain of removal from the Reunion.

 _“That’s not right. There’s nothing wrong with your strand.”_ She reached out a hand. _“Out of curiosity… would you spin yours with mine? For just a moment?”_

_“What you want to see?”_

_“Could I see… say, our discussion with Feferi and Meenah after what happened to Sollux?”_

Damara nodded and unlocked her implants to Aradia.

A few moments and she was certain. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Damara’s strand. It was completely readable and comfortable and uncontaminated, warped only in the clarity of language. And she recalled Sollux sharing strands with Mituna.

_“That’s not right, Damara.”_

Damara shook her head, visibly relieved. _“So I right? I not…”_ she waved a hand by her head.

 _“Something’s wrong,”_ Aradia acknowledged. _“But it’s not serious enough to remove you from the Reunion. That makes no sense.”_

Damara took a deep breath. _“Thank you. I tell Mituna.”_

 _“Be careful,”_ Aradia warned her. _“If the council decided to remove you arbitrarily, they may well declare you vectors if they find you still share strands with others, even if it is only between yourselves.”_

Damara stiffened and stood at attention. _“I know. I promise, Aradia. I not stupid. Thank you.”_

And she was gone. Aradia stared at the radar screen pensively.

That really made no sense. Unless there had been something about the artefact that the council hadn’t wanted common knowledge. As far as she was aware, secrecy was the only reason for abstaining from the Reunion.

Secrecy, or endangerment. Crocker’s motives for remaining abstinent were still a mystery. As were their motives in anything; they were ridiculously obscure in their motions and their internal workings. The only things one could rely on were their honor and loyalty.

As she thought that, she sent a message to Hellmurder Island. Her only hope was Father Crocker’s sense of responsibility for the situation. He could provide help based on Mituna’s genetics, potentially create a body for Sollux.

With a snap, Hellmurder Island hailed her. Aradia opened the line.

An old woman wearing an antique-styled Colamér dress saluted her when she appeared in the cockpit. “Megido.” She harrumphed. “Haven’t seen you people around recently.”

Aradia bowed. “Grandmother Crocker, it’s an honor to be at your homeship. I am here to report on a mission your nephew sent me on.”

“What, Paul?” she paused, tapped her chin. “Was that the one in Deadspace, with the living planet?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful!” Zhayd Crocker smiled brightly. “Did you learn what it was?”

“Yes.”

She looked fit to burst, ebullient, like she could barely keep herself from lifting off the ground. Aradia bounced on the balls of her feet, infected by Zhayd’s excitement.

“I can’t wait to get my hands on that data.” She crowed. “Oh, Megido. Wait, Aradia Megido?”

“Yes.” Aradia said politely, holding out her hand. She concealed her surprise at Zhayd’s recognition—she’d never gone to Hellmurder before, had she?

“Wonderful.” Zhayd’s smile was as calculating as it was genuinely excited. She snipped her fingers together like she was playing castanets. “Who else?”

“My sister Damara is piloting with Mituna Captor. Damara will not be boarding at Hellmurder Island, but staying on the ship. There are some repairs she’d like to conduct.”

Zhayd nodded and snapped her fingers. “Well! Access codes. Access codes, access codes…” she made a show of rummaging around in the pockets of her dress before unearthing a slip of paper and presenting it to Aradia. “Remember, one use only!”

Aradia took the paper and memorized the four lines of text. “I’ll remember. Grandmother Crocker?”

“Yes?” Zhayd asked, appearing preoccupied with a small data screen she’d pulled from her pocket.

“Thank you for ingress. I hope to return at some time. This collaboration is far from over, I’m afraid.”

Zhayd gave her a sympathetic smile. “Dear, it’s never over. Give my love to your sister and her co-pilot.”

“I will.”

Zhayd’s avatar winked out of existence and Aradia felt herself relax minutely. Things had gone well. She entered the codes and directed them to fire off in the direction of the next hailing signal before sitting back.

The conversation with Damara had given her plenty to think about. Like the fact that her and Mituna’s injuries had been overlooked initially. Neither were external damage, Aradia had known that; neither was visibly disabled or disfigured. It had taken Aradia time to pick out any physical indicators of the damage.

But neither’s injuries were the result of triggers, or of something that scrambled and warped their memories. Damara’s memories were clean and perfectly readable. There was no reason why she and Mituna should be barred from the Ten Thousand Reunion.

Aradia steepled her fingers in front of her chin, watching Hellmurder Island peel closer and closer. She could deal with those problems later on. At the moment, she had other issues that required her attention.

The ship began docking procedures, prompting her to hook in simply to compulsively check on Damara and Mituna’s piloting. It was fine, of course, but she still worried. The airlock sealed, and Aradia stood to make her way onto Hellmurder Island.

Jade and John Crocker were waiting for them when they walked down the ramp. Lime green and dark blue, they stood ramrod-straight with their arms crossed behind their backs, faces set.

"Dad- Father is waiting for you in his study." John said.

Jade took Mituna’s hand. “If you don’t mind, we can handle checkups on your health and on the ship’s structure for you.”

“Fancy.” Mituna wiggled his brows.

Jade smiled brightly. "We're sure the information you've brought more than makes up for any expenses incurred.”

Aradia fell into step next to John as they turned to lead her away. "Housemember Aradia Megido, at your service."

"I knew you well." They replied.

With a snort, she walloped them on the back. "Since when? I've never worked with Calliopaean Houses!"

"You did! You ran a mission with- oh."

"Oh what?"

"You know what, when you have a quiet moment, open the file I'll send you."

Aradia laughed. "Is it a computer virus?"

"No!" They peered at her carefully. "Can you get those?"

"Do you have eyes?" She asked haughtily.

John Crocker scratched under their glasses, prompting her to flinch on their behalf even though she knew there was nothing there that it would damage. "No."

"There's your answer."

They frowned and muttered something under their breath, opening the door in front of them and ushering her in. Father Crocker was indeed waiting for her.

"Crocker." Aradia sat down. He watched her, insofar as he could, with mounted cameras, and cued his clone to sit perpendicular to them.

"What did you find that had you flying back in such a hurry?" He asked. "And without Twin Armageddons or Sollux Captor?"

"We found a great deal more than expected," Aradia replied, absently entering the codes to her memory system into the computer. "Let's see. Here we are. The anomaly."

Condescension, in Aradia's holo, was slightly unnerving. Fuchsia streaks and gold bands surrounded the ridged ellipse, and the entrance was a slit Aradia knew opened something like a mouth.

John leaned forward, goggle-projected eyes wide.

"It's called the Condescension, and it is a partially-biological residence. Much of the filtration and housekeeping systems are tissue-based."

"You met the residents, then."

She called up images of Feferi and Meenah. "They say they are of the Peixes family. I believe them to be trolls, and Forbidden Tantalus concurs.”

Father Crocker rested his chin on his hand. "They mean no harm?"

"They were horrified at the concept of entering Caliborn or Calliope."

His brow wrinkled. "Why?"

Aradia took a deep, unnecessary breath. Here came the kicker.

She flicked them the file Meenah had scavenged from Orphaner, an obviously kid-intended reproduction of the Reckoner tale she and Feferi had told her.

A moment of silence while they viewed the files, not visually, but within their cortices. John reached the end first.

"That's bullshit," they said, strained.

"It seems unlikely." Father Crocker agreed. "However..."

He flicked data to the hovering holo. "The precursor strains we isolated, reconstructed, would have formed creatures much like these."

The first was approximately two meters in height, with dew claws and a bipedal stance. The second was a feminine figure of similar stature, but with a body and shape sculpted with a carapaced head, thorax, and abdomen with attached humanoid legs and arms.

"The Black Queen." Aradia breathed. "Incredible! Why isn't this in every trove of every ship or base?"

Father Crocker looked troubled. John gnawed on their lip.

"Did they mention anything else?"

"Sollux did." Aradia recalled. "He's, uh, _stuck_. One of the residents is sheltering him. He got access to their troves and he said that they had encountered an artifact, an orb."

"Oh?" Father Crocker asked.

"He called it Scratch. Said it was the Eye of Caliborn, and some other stuff, and that it could get into people's heads..."

John smashed their fists into the glass pane of the table, shattering it. Aradia jumped.

"He said that?" John asked, sounding like they were barely keeping themselves from shouting. Aradia stayed still.

"Yes. Perhaps not in so many words, but he said that there were accounts of it speaking into people's minds directly, and being able to see through their eyes. They would write out questions or replies to communicate. There was another one, too, but it-"

Father Crocker nodded decisively, cutting her off. "There is one reason we have not discussed this... Sn0wman creature we found."

"Why? You spliced her, right? Into Jake?"

John called up security cameras in one of the infirmary rooms.

Jake was asleep in the hospital bed, IV in his arm, restrained with a network of straps eerily reminiscent of early age Crocker space gear. His glasses lay on the table next to him.

"Jake has not been nearly as normal as his early years made him out to be," Father Crocker continued, tone stiff and controlled. "Initially, we saw no changes, and were certain it was a sign that the precursors were not nearly as different as we had thought. In recent decades, however..." He trailed off.

"Jake-"

"Has been having nightmares, talking in his sleep, going catatonic, and babbling about his eye." John snapped, uncharacteristically severe. “Where is this thing?” Their expression was wild. Every alarm bell in Aradia went off at once, warning her to back off, but she pushed onward.

"You think that Scratch might be what is infecting Jake?" Aradia asked incredulously.

"I think a great deal of things, Megido." Father Crocker said. "And now, I am thinking we may have found a clue."

Dread welled up in the pit of her stomach. If it was true, then, well, the possibilities didn't bear thinking about.

"I think I should start from the beginning," she said.

"The beginning?" Father Crocker asked.

Aradia stopped a moment, collected herself, and began to explain, this time without omission.

 

Sollux

 

Though Sollux felt repulsed and frightened of Doctor Scratch, he couldn't help but be drawn to it as well. It was much more central than it had originally appeared, as the chest cavity was something like a network of rooms, and though Eridan did his level best they passed by it frequently.

It took some time, but finally he managed to tell Eridan he wanted to talk to it.

"You want to what now." Eridan's face was unimpressed in Sollux's mental room. After the initial shock of the blank white space, he had crafted it like his home, with a heaping lot of computers so that he could access Eridan's trove without bothering him.

"You heard me." Sollux said patiently. Or it might have been, with a different tone and without the head tilt and eyebrow raise and added "Or can you not hear 'cause you're a fish out of water?"

Eridan groaned, sitting back on the sofa with affected casual elegance. He still lost his balance and collapsed periodically, forgetting how to move his feet or walk; but then, it was unnatural to him, the instincts clumsily stolen from Sollux.

"Could you at least take me to it and let me talk at it and you can drop out and ignore the world?" Sollux wheedled. "I'll let you probe my memory!"

Eridan grinned a shark-toothed grin. "I thought you didn't want to experience the unfortunate metaphor you'd constructed for 'probing'."

Sollux grimaced, pinwheeling backwards. "I could-- I guess-- deal with it? It wouldn't be awful?"

Eridan's grin widened and he raised his eyebrows.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't like you at all, I hate you actually, if anything I'd be in spades with you before being sweet and mucky or nice to you, Gog forbid--"

"My dear," Eridan purred, "A spade's just a heart with a thorn on top."

"Go fuck yourself."

Eridan grinned, lips peeled back, and looked like he was about to say something lewd.

"Absolutely not. Shut up. Shut the hell up, nookwh- no. Never mind. The point is," Sollux groaned, "I want to talk to Doc Scratch."

Eridan's grin vanished, quickly replaced with a thunderous scowl. "No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Five minutes!"

"No."

Digging through his mind for anything to offer in exchange, he said desperately, "I can tell you about the thing that killed the Black Queen!"

This arrested Eridan's attention. "Spades Slick."

"No, it, he, was something else." Grinding his teeth, Sollux recalled all he could. "In Calliope, they found an old Reckoner remain with DNA from two different organisms."

"I'm listening." Eridan said, fins fluttering. "And if it's good, you get to talk to Scratch."

Sollux swallowed. "See, the whole place was strewn with broken planets and moons. They thought it was the scene of the battle but-- aargh-- it was in Calliope, and you told me most of the war took place in Caliborn."

"That's true."

"And your trove says that the event in Calliope that wiped out the green Cherubim was the battle between Spades Slick and Sn0wman."

"You got the hang of pronouncing numbers. Good for you."

Sollux hissed. "The remains should be Sn0wman's and Spades Slick's, right?"

"Almost definitely. So you found these? Why didn't that appear in your trove? Two Carapacians-"

"It didn't occur to me because they thought one of the samples was from a dog!" Sollux yelped. "And House Crocker-"

"A dog?" Eridan snapped. "A dog?"

"Yes, a very large black dog. Crocker-"

"What did they do with the samples?" Eridan demanded.

"House Crocker took them! And used them to modify five clones."

"Where are they?"

"All but one are dead," Sollux admitted.

"Where's the last one?"

"She lives on Hellmurder Island-- don't give me that look, House Crocker named it, not me-- and her name's Jade."

"Jade," Eridan said, relaxing. "I'll remember that. Yes, Jade."

"Do I get to talk to Scratch?" Sollux asked impatiently.

"Yes. We're almost there. Please stand by."

Sollux braced himself for the return to Eridan's flesh, reviewing the list of questions he had. It occurred to him that he's forgotten to mention Jake to Eridan. Ah well, wouldn't matter. That could be information with which to ply him some other time. Jake hadn't shown noticeable effects from the splice like Jade had, anyhow.


End file.
